I’m sorry, I’m truly frustrated and sound like a broken record. But I’m getting really sick of the standard answer we hear from too many “experts,” guru’s, sales/marketing managers.
But doing more seems to be the universal solution to every selling challenge.
The “thoughtful” posts from the guru’s show charts. They are all the same, focusing on dials, focusing on emails, focusing on touches. They run the math we learned in 3rd-4th grade (remember learning “times” tables). They develop the models, projecting yields from these efforts, projecting the results of those efforts.
And we now know how to work the numbers backwards. We look at the results we need, look at the yields, going backwards to calculate the number of dials, the number of emails, the number of outreaches, the number of activities.
For at least the last 10 years, this has been the collective wisdom of too many gurus. Years ago, they laid out the tables and the calculations. We used that wisdom to generate our own numbers. We executed on those numbers.
The argument around these approaches was, often, predictability. Running the math, knowing the equations, produced predictable results.
They worked for a while, until they didn’t.
We go back to the gurus. They are presenting updated tables, updated algorithms, new formulas for success. And all are based on doing more. So we take their wisdom, we look at what we are doing, upping the ante, doing more.
Overtime, there’s a certain “macho” mentality around this, “Real sellers do more!” I read, with incredulity, some “expert” pridefully saying, “I start my day at 3 am….” He went on to describe his focus, his discipline, the hints and tricks to doing more. You guessed it, it’s exploiting technology do ratchet up the volumes. Another expert showed chart after chart of math and tables. I went through all 17 pages, of his tables and equations. Yes, I know how to do the math. My mom saved all my report cards, I got an “A-” in times tables. (I do struggle with polynomial equations and complex integrals, but that was high school, my mind was in other places).
Years ago, we had to do X dials to create success. Then it became 2X, then 4X, then 8X. This was not to produce 8X results, it was to produce the same results originally forecast. But now it takes 8X the effort. And we know what the answer will be next year.
And year after year, doing more doesn’t produce what we need. But when we look for answers, guess what we learn about the secret formula to success, do more.
Ironically, we’ve found this approach is very unpredictable. What we predicted with our equations is no longer working as we predicted, so we do….you guessed it…..more.
We all know, even these experts quote it, “Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results, is the definition of insanity!”
And knowing this, we keep reverting to the same behaviors and answers. I won’t repeat it, you already know it.
Perhaps, the key too success is not to do more, but maybe to change, to do something different!
Rant over.
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