The Magic Feather – Part the Second

When an organization creates a strategy (magic feather) or plan to sell something, they do so in the true belief that it is a good way to sell. After all that is the goal. To work for them and be successful one must buy into the belief system of the organization. Whether the plan is excellent or poor makes no difference to the person on the street, either way they must make a point of suspending any disbelief that they might have or they will be ineffective or have to do things in a manner that is at odds with their organization. If they do things at odds with their organization they had better be great right away and even then they might be chastised for setting a bad example of not being a team player.

For those that are successful using a magic feather it might turn out that like Dumbo they learn that they could fly all along without it. It’s a good practice to be a bit skeptical when listening to mice. The magic feather isn't in the process or the system, something external, it's in the person. Isn't that what we learned from Dumbo?

(Apologies to those that don't know Disney, Dumbo is not a negative term for anyone, please Google "Flying Elephant")

"Magic Feather" Part the First

How To Turn Prospects Into Clients

For over a decade, Margarita Rozenfeld of Incite International Insights From Your Offsites has been a patron of Sales Lab, commissioning innovative new work for her customers. A few months ago, she asked for a two hour presentation that would be a complete sales program for her CEO group.

Margarita rounded up a dozen CEOs this past Monday, including three Sales Lab Stakeholders, Matt Whitaker of Intelligent Office, Alexandria and the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, Jennifer Schaus of Jennifer Schaus Associates and the Government Contractors - Culture & Networking at The Kennedy Center, and Chida Sadayappan of OpenOsmium and the National Capital Area Google Technical User Groups (NCA GTUG)

We do weekly presentations, day long presentations, hour presentations and even a series of 300 second presentations, but two hours that would be valuable for company owners called for a rethink.

We started with Talk Your Business: How To Sell More and Better Business Right Away, to establish introductions and stories, the basic building blocks of sales.

Next, we introduced the Sales Model, so everyone would have a common definition of what we were talking about.

Then we showed the Five Step Prospecting Script and the Four Step Sales Framework.

Out of a dozen participants we started five new transactions. That's a good presentation.

Best thing the participants learned? The importance of stories in the sales process and how to use them.

Tongue On A Tooth Socket

Finding new opportunities is hard work. We stumble over a pebble beside the road, polish it, put it with other pebbles, hoping to make something valuable.

It's even worse when we finally decide we don't have enough time, treasure, and talent to take an opportunity across the finish line.

We let go of three opportunities last month. We’d been looking for ways to make 'em work for several months, and finally came to the realization that as good as we are, we couldn't do it.

Even after we made the right decision, I kept thinking about them, like running my tongue over a newly pulled tooth socket. 

The Magic Feather -Part the First

First imagine an elephant that can fly (please try to suspend your disbelief), and that there is no knowledge of this ability by said elephant. Lo and behold, along comes a mouse with a “Magic Feather” that will let the elephant fly and it does.

Belief as a self-fulfilling prophecy is quite important and I believe in the “Magic Feather Theory” in many parts of life. Simply put, almost any system that is believed to work will work better than no system at all, because of the belief that it will work. However logic dictates that some systems are inherently better than others.

In sales we must believe that the way we are going about things will bring results. If not there is no reason to start. Believing in an inferior system is more likely to produce results than non-belief in a superior system.

Believe in what you’re doing and what you’re selling and things will work out. So what about the actual systems? ---- Part the Second next

(My apologies to Dumbo)

Time, Talent, and Treasure

Losers often say they didn't have enough time, talent, and treasure.

Having been present on both sides, neither did the winners.

So what really separates the two?

That may be worth figuring out.

What do you think?