Writing

Using Internal Documents to Win Business

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When the original edition of “Accidental Genius” hit the market ten years ago, one of the first readers to contact me was Andy Orrock.

Andy told me he would get his best ideas during his daily run. Unfortunately, when he’d return home to write them down he’d be disappointed. “It’s as if a filter got between me and what I wanted to say,” he said. His writing sounded stiff and artificial, and it was hurting his career. The business plans he’d send investors went unread.

Using the “Accidental Genius” freewriting technique, as well as other associated techniques, Andy learned to trust the natural ways his mind used to develop and express thoughts. Slowly, his written ideas started matching the honesty of those in his head.

Andy, however, has pushed the concept of honest expression further than most.

He is now the chief operating officer at a Dallas technology company. There, the salespeople don’t try winning business by sending prospects glossy marketing materials. Everyone knows those are fake. Instead, the salespeople send prospects internal documents — written by Andy — that have been repurposed for public use.

Here’s how it works.

At the start of a client project, Andy writes a detail-rich requirements document that spells out the client’s problem and the steps needed to crack it. The document serves as an internal blueprint around which his firm’s development team can plan their systems and programming work. When the project is finished, the document gets filed.

Now, when a prospect calls and wants to better understand the capabilities of Andy’s firm, Andy digs through the files and finds the requirements document that most resembles the prospect’s situation, crosses out and disguises sensitive information, such as developer and server names, and emails them this “redacted document” as proof that his company knows what it’s doing and has solved this kind of problem before.

Says Andy: “Our documents show prospects 90% of the answer, and  demonstrate that we have a mastery of the details. For the first time, prospects feel like they’ve reached a firm that understands what they’re facing.”

The candor of his writing and approach has become a potent sales-conversion tool for his firm.

My question for you, then, is this: What assets do you have that can supplement or replace your marketing materials, so prospects can get an unadorned view of how you think and solve problems?

The Secret to Doing Pushups is the Secret to Writing a Book

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When I was in college I had this notion that being able to fire off dozens of pushups would mean I was a powerhouse. At the time, I could only do a couple of reps.

I asked a friend if he knew easier exercises I could substitute for pushups that — at the same time — would strengthen my ability to do pushups.

He looked at me like I was nuts, and said: “The way to get better at doing pushups is by doing pushups.”

At the time, I didn’t appreciate his advice. Now I do.

I’ve since worked at pushups, and can now do hundreds in a single session. I can even do demanding variations, like clapping pushups and knuckle pushups. How did I accomplish these feats? Not through alternate training methods. Awkwardly and incrementally, I simply did more pushups.

Learning by doing — or, perhaps, doing by doing — doesn’t just work for pushups. It can help in other situations, like when you want to write a book.

A person will tell me they want to write a book, and I’ll ask, so what are you doing about it? They’ll tell me they’ve been writing stories, plays, essays, and poems. They’ll boast about having kept a journal for years.

They think these shorter literary forms ease them into the writing of a full-length book. Could be. Trying different forms stretches the mind, and gives one more tools to use. But if they never get around to tackling their book, these forms serve more as a clever means of procrastination.

If you want to write a novel, write a novel. If you want to write a screenplay, write a screenplay. If you want to write a one-person show, write a one-person show. If you want to write a history of international banking, write a history of international banking.

By writing the thing you want to write, you’ll learn how to do it. You’ll learn as you go.

Now, I’m not saying that what you write will be good, or  that writing it will be easy. At times, you’re going to feel self-conscious, stupid, and angry.

But, for you, writing a book is likely a necessity. It’s something, ready or not, you must do.

Learn on this one. The next one will be better.

Writing and the Functional Hero

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In the book, “Which Lie Did I Tell?,” William Goldman writes about his younger days as an awful writer. He was so bad, in fact, that in college he was one of three editors of the school literary magazine, and even then he couldn’t get a single story into his own magazine.

Things changed when he read a short story collection by “Rich Man, Poor Man” author, Irwin Shaw. Goldman thought Shaw’s tales were among the best he’d ever read. More importantly, they were told with such ease that Goldman said to himself: “I could do that.”

Shaw’s writing helped make Goldman into a professional writer. Years later, Goldman would write the novels and screenplays for “The Princess Bride,” “Marathon Man,” and “Magic,” as well as the screenplays for “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men.”

Heroes come in different styles. We have heroes who do near-impossible things, like win a batting title, forge a peace agreement, or walk on the moon.

Then we have another type of hero: one whose works seem wondrous but doable. They give us a model to follow. Call them functional heroes. Irwin Shaw provided a functional hero for William Goldman.

When I have to write something ambitious, I often call on one of my functional heroes for assistance. I read their work over and over, so I can dope out their methodologies and pick up their cadences.

For the first edition of “Accidental Genius,” my hero and role-model was Nicholson Baker. In particular, I idolized the self-conscious, self-deprecating honesty he showed in his book about John Updike, “U & I,” and tried to introduce that into my work. For the second edition of “Accidental Genius,” I called upon the aforementioned Goldman to serve as my muse. His long chatty sentences and focus on story inspired me to loosen up as I told my tales about liberating the mind through freestyle writing.

The funny thing about my use of Baker and Goldman as guides? Neither edition of “Accidental Genius” sounds anything like the work of those two gentlemen. It was enough for me, though, to hear them as I wrote.

How about you? Who are some of your functional heroes? Who are your muses?