We are pummeled with “deep insights” and “expertise” on the single right way to do something.
Whether it is the wording of the title of a prospecting email. The number of words/tone or call to action of that email. Or it might be the formula for the sequence and timing of touches in your prospecting. Or it may be a methodology, process, objection handling technique. It could be certain metrics, comp systems, or “THE” right tools.
Today, I read something, from a very smart guy, declaring, “Long form is dead, short form is the only thing that works.” It wasn’t focused on any particular usage of long/short form, it was a simple declaration that attention spans have decreased and long form has no place in the world (ironic that Twitter/X keeps allowing longer forms).
Whenever I read these pearls of wisdom about the single right way to do things, I sigh and say, “Well, it depends….” (At least that’s short).
What we do, whether long form or short, our outreach/engagement techniques, our processes/methodologies, the metrics and incentives, how we create value, how we coach, develop, and grow our people differs—from company to company, customer to customer, market to market, individual to individual. And it differs over circumstance and time.
There is no single “rule,” no single “right way,” no magic solution that enables us to address every customer, every situation, every opportunity.
I suspect we are attracted to this advice because it absolves us of the responsibility of learning, adapting, being present, and being engaged. We don’t have to think, rather follow the rules: “No prospecting email is longer than 12 words….” We don’t have to be engaging in conversations, all we have to do is read the script, pausing when the script says, “Wait for the customer response,” then continuing to read our scripts.
There are guidelines that help us improve what we do, but they are only that, recommendations not hard and fast rules. And when we look at the highest performers, we find they leverage these very effectively, but are agile in adapting them to the situation, individual or context.
For the past 10+ years, we’ve seen a certain rigidity around the mechanization of selling and leading our people. This approach embraces and reinforces the “single right answer that applies in every situation.” Yet, at the same time, we’ve seen all the performance data, resulting from that mechanization plummeting.
The concepts of agility, adaptability, figuring things out are foreign to all but the consistent top performers. Ironically, one would think that if we observed them and started copying them, we would see the importance and value of these principles.
Don’t mistake my discussion as a suggestion that we abandon methodologies, processes, tried and true strategies, and so forth. These are very powerful, but they represent frameworks that enable the very best to efficiently and effectively adapt the methodologies, etc. to the particular solution. As much as I hate sports analogies, the very best teams have plays. The practice the plays endlessly, they implement them in the games–but in these situations they recognize they have to adapt to the specific situation and nor run the play rigidly.
Furthermore, these experts spouting the rules for success (One thinks they are emulating Moses with the 10 Commandments written in stone), believe their rules apply across every situation and market. They believe they apply in SaaS sales, complex professional services, capital equipment, healthcare, financial, every sector in every region in the world. But they don’t! What may be very effective in one sector is worthless in others. What works in North America, does not work in India, Sub Saharan Africa, Japan, or even Europe.
And it’s not just the “experts” and “gurus” that are doing this. Within our organizations we promote that mechanization and strict compliance to our scripts, playbooks and methodologies. We are not equipping our people to engage each other and our customers in meaningful ways.
Think about it for a moment. How many organizations are training and developing people’s skills in curiosity, critical thinking, problem solving, figuring things out? The very things we need to increase our success. The very things our customers value in helping increase theirs.
I’ll stop my rant here. Yeah, it’s not short form. Yeah, short form advocates won’t read it. But of course those people are not my audience or in my ICP. I know the people I care about and want to/can help will read this, challenge it, question me about, “Dave you missed this….” or “Have you ever considered…..”
Perhaps it’s about knowing your audience, knowing the situation, and adapting what is most purposeful for each.
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