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Progress! Stop Selling! E-Zine - Issue No. 3 /April 2006

Dear Reader,

During my workshops I like to play this little game with the participants. I ask them to form as many logically correct three-word sentences as possible with the letters P, U and L as the first letters of each word. For example: P eter U ndertakes L iberally. While it does not make much sense, it is logically correct.

I ask the participants to first estimate how many sentences they can make in two minutes. Answers typically range from two to three, to 20 to 30 sentences. Then I ask them to do it and check again how many they actually come up with. In most cases it is lower or the same as their estimate. Very rarely it is more.

Then I ask them if they believe that it is possible to write 2,000 sentences or more if we all work together and take three instead of two minutes. Usually everybody will say that this is crazy, impossible, etc.

Here is how it works:

•  I ask one of the participants to be the timekeeper and to give us a signal after one, two, and three minutes have passed.

•  During the first minute, I ask the participants to give me only substantives that start with P, like Peter, Price, Parrot, etc.; during the second minute only verbs that start with U, like undertake, unveil, etc.; and during the third minute, only adverbs like liberally, laterally, etc.

•  Since you can combine any substantive with any verb and any adverb and still   get logically correct sentences, you may multiply the number of substantives with the number of verbs and the number of adverbs. So if we find 20 substantives,12 verbs and 10 adverbs, that would make 2,400 possible sentences.

Today's article is about how we often limit our own success and how we can achieve outstanding sales results by thinking outside the box.

Let's keep progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor

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More Sales with Less Effort: What is Your Limit?
By Charlie Lang

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Imagine this.  

You need to make a cold call to see if a certain target company could become your customer. So you found a name, the position of the person, the phone number, and you researched more about the company from the web.

Let's call this person that you found Martha, a marketing manager of a medium-sized jewelry manufacturer. Let's further assume that you want to sell advertisements for a jewelry trade magazine.

If I ask you, "What would you like to achieve on this first call to Martha?" what would be your answer? Most people I ask typically say: "I would like to get an appointment with her to discuss further." Would that be your answer, too?

Next I ask, "What would be the best imaginable outcome from this first call?" Well, of course, to get the business right there and then. Is this actually possible or would something render it totally impossible, like certain procedures some customers must follow to place an order? In this case, what would be the best imaginable outcome instead?

Of course, in many cases people can't make a decision right on the spot. They might need approval from their management or to further clarify their needs with their colleagues, etc. However, the same thing could be in the way if we first get an appointment for a meeting. So if we can find this out on the phone, why waste time with a meeting?

But there's more to it:

•  If our intention is to get a meeting, then we tend to put pressure -consciously or unconsciously - on the prospect to actually get that meeting. And as we know, pressure results in resistance (in physical terms: action= reaction).

•  By setting the intention to get a meeting we actually limit our possibilities to just that. Because once we get that meeting, we typically stop the conversation. Who says that the client wouldn't have been ready to go even further? We won't know unless we try.

Moving the Limit

We found it to be much more useful and successful to change the intention to: "I want to take the prospect as far as possible in his buying decision process. I don't know how far that will be, so I will check where his point of resistance is and then stop there and try to figure out how we can move on from there the next time around."  Additionally, we found it useful to add another intention, especially in cold calls: building as much trust as possible.

With this mindset we won't create undue resistance. This further enhances the trust level and doesn't limit our success through an intention that doesn't promote going up to the natural limit, i.e. the buying decision.

Thinking Outside the Box

Regarding intentions, I often ask business people, "What is your vision for your business in two to three years time? How would you like it to be by then?"

The answers I typically get are either something like "Oh, I never really thought about that, I just try to make my business grow," or "Well, we have a three-year plan with an average annual growth rate of 12%." Or something like these.

If you were to work for these managers or entrepreneurs, would such answers excite you? Or inspire you? Probably not.

I encourage my clients to look at the bigger picture and to find out what is actually theoretically possible. If they are today no. 10 in the market with a 3% market share and the top player has a 25% market share, is it theoretically impossible to overtake the no. 1? If it is theoretically possible, what stops us from making that our vision? What would we need to happen to make it a reality?

Hey, I didn't say it would be easy and I know that in such cases the traditional growth approach of improving the product, the services, the sales force, etc. perhaps won't get you there in the next 10 years. If you want to achieve such a highly ambitious vision within two to three years, you will need to do something that hasn't been done before.

Lateral Thinking

Edward de Bono, the author of best-selling books on thinking, coined the term "Lateral Thinking," which could be defined as "thinking outside the box."

How to do it? You first need to establish a strong provocation. He describes five ways of developing a provocation:

1. Received Provocation . You hear or read a stupid remark and transform it into a provocation. For example the former CEO of Volkswagen said that they should seal the engine hood of cars so that no maintenance can be made. As a consequence, the engine would need to work maintenance-free. It became a reality for radios and televisions long ago when they moved from tube transistors to semi-conductors.
   
2. Reversal . You change the normal way of doing things to the opposite. For example, you could say, we pay our customer if we have to repair his product. That would force you to make your product as perfect and indestructible as possible.
   
3. Escape . You remove a normal feature. Perhaps it is normal practice for you to have face-to-face meetings with your potential customers before they reach a buying decision. What if you removed the meetings from their buying process? How could you still get the business, and perhaps much more because you save valuable time?
   
4. Wishful Thinking . You pose a hypothetical question like "How would it be if you could get any price you want for what you sell?" This may lead you to think very hard of how you could position your product or service in such a way that most people want it so desperately that it doesn't matter too much how much it costs.
   
5. Outrageous . Anything that seems totally impossible like increasing your business 10 times within one year. Obviously, in most industries this is not possible by just doing things better. You will need to come up with an entirely different approach to achieve that.

After having established a strong provocation, you will need to move it to new ideas. While your original provocative statement may not be turned into a reality, it helps you achieve a breakthrough that you might not have attained otherwise.

Conclusion: Our intentions have a strong influence on our behavior and ultimately our results. What are your limits? Do they limit your success or do they allow you to become the best you can be? Are you ready to accelerate your progress by thinking outside the box?

Progress-U's coaches & trainers are passionate about helping you achieve outstanding sales results. Contact us to find out more.

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