We are driven to find the single magical secret to selling success. That one thing, if we do it well, everything else magically falls into place and all our problems go away. If we find and do that one thing, our worries about hitting our goals, maxing our comp plans, achieving our scaling plans, max’ing our market caps all disappear.
There have been past secrets to sales success. Years ago, it was the number of dials/calls we made each day. Then it was taken over by the number of emails a day. If we produced X emails a day, we could achieve our goals. And the math to scaling, once we determined that secret to selling success. became trivial. If we wanted to scale 2X all we had to do was two times those activities. The thinking being, “If 1000 emails produce this result, then 2000 emails produce twice that number.”
And, over time, those secrets to success were no longer secret. And they were no longer as successful. What used to take 1000 emails/calls to produce the desired outcome, today, it takes 2000, 3000, and more.
Those things that always worked, no longer do so. So we are now onto the next new secret to selling success. One wonders what it might be?
Let me tell you what the gurus of all things selling are whispering into the ears of their followers. Keep it a secret! It’s………. dramatic pause…… drum roll…….. It’s more meetings! That’s it, the more meetings we have the more successful we will be!
And to scale our success, all we have to do is increase the number of meetings we have! Double the meetings and we double our success.
The mere announcement of this secret to success has spawned 100s of comments and innumerable high fives and “You go bro,” or “This is brilliant!”
I started to cogitate on the thought of more meetings. I was eager to learn more.
“A rep with a fantastic sales process but no meetings gets fired!” Of course, why haven’t I ever thought of that!
But I still had some skepticism, I’d always thought of the concept of high impact meetings. Meetings where we create value with the customer. Meetings where the customer reflects, “That was a good use of my time….”
At the feet of the guru, I discovered how wrong I was. I learned, “A salesperson with no process at all, but with tons of meetings, can make you money!”
I was kicking myself. Despite decades of experience in developing and executing high impact meetings, I had been wasting my time. None of that counts, it’s just the fact that people are having meetings. Process is worthless! We can wander all over the place, but if we have meetings, it produces results.
I think of all the time I wasted. I felt guilty about all the time the thousands of sales people I’ve worked with have wasted. I think of all the research reports I’ve read about the loss of productivity and effectiveness we experience in meetings.
We were completely wrong. It’s all about the meeting, not the purpose or what we accomplish or whether we create value. A salesperson with no process but tons of meetings is the winner!
But then I got started thinking, what happens when we run out of time for meetings. After all, they do take time. I started doing the sales math, “Hmmm if a meeting is 30 minutes and I work 10 hours a day, and I don’t take time for lunch or to pee, I can squeeze in 20 meetings…..”
Then, because scaling is so important, I thought, “How do we scale?” I realized, “Why do we limit ourselves to 10 hours a day? We can get by with 4 hours of sleep, let’s work 20 hours a day and double the meetings, 40 meetings! Doubling revenue!” I suspect if sales enablement starts giving us IVs and Catheters, we don’t have to worry about silly things like eating and peeing and we are set to scale like crazy.
Then I thought more deeply and had an “Aha” moment. If all that counts is meetings, why do they have to be 30 minutes? Why can’t they be 15 minutes? Just imagine, in 20 hours we can have 80 meetings!!! Then my mind started iterating, what about 5 minute meetings?
I realized this time thing was a limiter, so I started thinking of other ways to scale. With my “old fashioned mind” I thought, “Maybe we can hire more sales people. If we 10X’d the number of sales people, we could 10X the number of meetings!
But the “guru” had a different point of view. “Hiring more people doesn’t make us more money!” If a manager has that idea, that person should get out of the company.
I have to admit, I was confused. I didn’t understand the wise counseling of the “guru.” I kept doing the sales math, “If one person can do X meetings, then we could get 10 people to do 10X meetings…….” But somehow I wasn’t getting it.
And then a light bulb went off. While the “guru” didn’t hint at this, I realized we have the answer right in front of us. It’s AI!!! We can get whatever number of meetings we need, simply by introducing more bots! How silly of me not to think of this. I am sure the guru is holding back on this final pearl of wisdom, I can’t wait until he shares how AI can take over meetings and we can go to “infinity and beyond….”
I am so relieved to know this secret to sales success. One that has been staring us in the face, but we’ve been blind to it. It’s all about the meetings!
Regular readers will know that my mind continues to spin on these things. I thought, “there has to be a point at which more meetings isn’t working as well.”
I started recognizing a pattern. It started with dials and calls, the more volume we could create, the better our results. Almost in parallel, we recognized the power of emails. The more emails we can send, the better. And, with technology, there was virtually no limit to what these can do.
But these, each got worn out. They were no longer working.
We are saved, for the moment, by the prescience of this “guru.” The answer, for now is more meetings! And I can envision a world where we are leveraging AI to scale meetings, avoiding 10X ing humans, with few limitations.
But at some point in the future, this too will fail.
What will this guru come up with next?
I started recognizing a pattern. There is a certain sequencing when you look at progressing from calls, emails, outreaches to meetings, to…..
I started wondering, what’s the next big thing?
It has to be more demos!
But that will get played out, so what will come after that?
Perhaps more proposals!
I started to think, “What’s the light at the end of this long dark tunnel? What is that magical thing that, if all sales people did, would lead us into continued success?”
Then it struck me like a bolt of lightning!
It’s “More Purchase Orders!” That’s the ultimate key to selling success. All that counts is more POs.
I hope as the “guru” looks at my humble prognostication he turns a kind eye on this humble student and smiles, thinking, “I think he’s got it…”
And I know I will be in this “guru’s” good graces. I know how to link the impact of POs to financial statements….
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