Greg's Right FIT #347

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Things other people said
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Things other people said

• "If you give up a day, you may recover a week."
  – Dean Robinson, Australia's Family Business Transformer
• "Define your culture, hire those that will live it, believe it in it and advocate for it to others, and then get out of the way and let them do their thing."
  – Dillon Allie, HDMZ
• "When our words fall short, the measurement system keeps communicating."
  – Kathy Letendre, Letendre & Associates
• "One might argue getting old is the most common most haunting long term disease of all."
  – Kevin Mikuls, Singer/Actor

Being Human - Value is in the eye of the beholder

"How you sell is a sample of how you solve." – Mahan Khalsa

When it comes to complex selling, there's a lot going on. Complex sales means the problem is complex, or getting to a result is going to require talking multiple issues. 

How do I know this? Because all solutions, all products, derive their value from the problems they solve. 

I get a lot of sales literature, specifically sales training literature. One common tagline is "sell on value." I think they mean uncover value because it doesn't matter how valuable your solution is to you, value lies in the problem the prospect is trying to solve.

I use the world's best snowblower story to illustrate this point. 

Great Snowblower

Imagine I show up at your office wheeling in a snowblower. It's not just any snowblower, I tell you, this one is powered by solar. It’s advanced battery system holds a charge for months at a time, even on cloudy days. What this means to you, Mr. Prospect, is it will be ready to go when you are. No oil changes, no empty gas cans, just ready to go. It has enough power to handle anything up to a five-car extended driveway on a corner lot. This snowblower not only has power, it can handle everything from a three-foot snowdrift to a small dusting of snow. It won’t just clear your driveway, it will clear sidewalks, flagstone paths, and make grass paths for little Fido to do his business by the back tree. It can even handle pea gravel porches without making a mess. The best part? It’s a robot. With its advanced AI, satellite GPS, and your Wi-Fi connection, once you show it around the property, it's powerful brain senses the weather and operates independently, without any instruction from you, for the entire winter. It's pet safe, environmentally friendly, and has a setting to go looking for old people in a 1 mile radius to help. The best scientific minds in the world have been working on this snow blowing technology for decades. I can say to you in all honest, Mr. Prospect, this snowblower does everything. 

The prospect nods his head, mouth slightly agape, not knowing what to say. The machine is beautiful yet slightly menacing. It’s ready for work. Then the prospect smiles, and says, "Greg, this is an amazing machine. But I live in a penthouse apartment in a high rise. And we’re in Phoenix.

Value is uncovered

Value does not derive from the product. I need to get out of Phoenix and make my way to Houghton, MI, where the annual snowfall is 218 inches. They have the problem.

Don't worry about bringing value. Worry about finding the problem to be solved.

Random Stuff

“People love to buy. They hate to be sold."

If there is any disadvantage to a career in sales, it's that I'm easy to sell to. I have a vested interest in seeing the end of a sales cycle. It warms the cockles of my heart when I hear solid discovery, a good tie-down, overcoming of objections, and closing questions.

The upside is many salespeople are terrible at all those things. They make assumptions, use techniques masking their intent, run from objections, and never get around to asking for the business. Case in point, for the last year the neighborhood has been overrun with a group from one of our local internet providers. Century Link is installing a fiberoptic system in the 'hood and it's supposed to be faster than my current gigabit service. (which never gets close to a gigabit, and it makes me mad) It's cheaper too. I only know this because I research things when the bad salespeople leave. 

I read an anecdote many years ago from the owner of one of Texas' biggest department stores. I think it was either Mr. Neiman or Mr. Marcus. He too, loves sales. He made a pact with himself that he would buy anything sold to him by a competent salesperson. Whether he needed it or not. When his wife suggested this might be expensive he said he would also refuse to buy anything that was not sold to him. 

He went an entire year without buying anything and eventually abandoned the effort.

The sales approach I'm most interested in is door-to-door. It can't work very well, I think, because who answers the door anymore? Talk to a stranger in person? Plus, terrible salespeople? Seems expensive. I read an article highlighting the life of one of these characters, and it confirmed a lot of my biases. 

Sam Taggart’s Hard Sell

In other news, I'm getting my new Century Link service installed today. I just needed someone to ask.

(I could have hugged him he did so well)