boon·dog·gle | \ ˈbün-ˌdä-gəl
- a braided cord worn by Boy Scouts as a neckerchief slide, hatband, or ornament
- a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft
(thanks to Merriam-Webster online)
Last week’s Go Fly a Kite edition made me start thinking of all my childhood summertime activities.
My Mom believes idle children are troublesome or in trouble. This means there were always activities – one of which was Camp Adelphi. If you’ve ever gone to summer day camp, you know that there are lots of activities; hiking, swimming, playing in the creek, campfires with singing, and boondoggle.
Today let’s talk about the intricate braids of boondoggle – from the “easy” box stitch to crazy 4-strand twisted patterns; you can spend a lot of time on YouTube how-to videos (maybe I did… maybe I didn’t).
Don’t worry we’re not REALLY going to talk about making a boondoggle.
Sales Boondoggle
Instead of making boondoggle – think of the ways you integrate yourself into the worlds of your prospects and customers. The idea is to become incorporated into how they do business.
At minimum you need two strands:
- what your prospects & customers need
- what you do for them
Not the same color – but complementary, woven together to make something stronger and more beautiful than it was alone.
The relationships you build can become more complex, stronger, and more beautiful. Adding more strands tying you together; additional people, departments, solutions, services, etc.
The key to these intricate relationship patterns is to balance weaving – one strand from your customer and one strand from you, multiplied out evenly with no one entity weighing down the pattern.
Off to boondoggle,
Lynn
ps: You can thank a 1920 or 30s Eagle Scout Robert Link of Rochester, New York, for coining the term. For more on the history check out Where did the word “boondoggle” come from?