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Showing posts with label Pirates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pirates. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Sales Revolution Built On Hope? Careful what you wish for...




The game is changing, but it always has been.  
The way businesses align purchasing is shifting, but it always has been.
New marketing platforms are emerging but always have been.
Sales are evolving but always have been.
There is talk of a selling rebellion, but there always has been.

There's chatter about the new selling, the new way businesses are buying, and how the sales professionals of today had better change their ways. We've got to multiply our efforts tenfold, continue to cold call and embrace social media.

Today, "Kings", "Cowboys" and "Warriors" populate our little niche and we've got professionals "saving the industry one copier at a time". Worthy, noble, and authentic efforts - I'm all for self-branding and rebellion.  I question the focus of our current emotional revolt.

Words mean things -

Revolt: refuse to acknowledge someone or something as having authority
Revolution: a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system

So yes, we as a profession, are in the mood for revolt and revolution. It's understood the selling representatives are the Rebels but who are we 'rebelling' against? Who are the bad guys?



Are we taking on the old-school mentality? Assaulting old techniques is one thing, but these are outdated tools, not the root of evil.

Maybe we're rebelling against our prospects and customers - not the brightest idea.

Conducting a revolution against other sales people is self-destructive and most likely a strategy our nemesis relies upon. From the outside, it must look like we're a bunch of self-loathing, never good enough yahoo's running around spewing "transformation, this" and "the new way of that...".

To summarize:
  • Revolting against prospects and clients is not the way.
  • We are not our greatest enemy, we will not self-destruct.
  • The "Evil Empire" is not the past.
Again, who is the enemy?

I know who. If you're a sales trainer, you're not going to like it.  If you're a sales manager, you're not going to like it.  If you're selling anything through a tiered channel, you are not going to like it.  Heck, I don't even like it.

The target of our revolution are those who inflict quotas, false ideals and untrustworthy sales techniques: OEMs, Mega dealers, and vendors of the day are the enemy.
I have moved from certainty to doubt, from devotion to rebellion. 
- Phil Donahue
I am the last one to call for unionization - unions kill - but an organized resistance is the only alternative.  I'm talking about a guild of selling professionals - similar to the Screen Actor's Guild.


So who is in a position to organize contemporary selling professionals?  I have no idea but a great start would be for sales people to think differently:

start selling for yourself
form your own brand
invest in yourself



CAUTION: Rebellions require blood.  The cost of freedom is never free and all revolutions, have casualties.  Who, in this cause, will give all?  Who will create change through sacrifice?

  • Will any of the new sales trainers step up to form The Guild or continue taking money from the establishment?
  • Will mega-dealers change the way reps are paid or continue to support an archaic standard?
  • Will OEMs get rid of their tiered approach?
  • And who in their right mind would join such a movement, let alone LEAD against these most formidable foes?
I don't have the answer to that question.  I can say finding a leader within the Empire(OEM,Trainers, MegaDealers) is at best dubious.  Perhaps an older, wiser Rebel will make their way center stage.

Caution: As a metaphor, in the movie Rogue One, can you recall how many of the small rebel team survived?

Nobody.

Sales Revolution?  What Revolution?

Monday, October 27, 2014

Steve Jobs Talks about " Xerox and Copier Heads".


13,000 feet somewhere over the Untied States of America heading to the Executive Summit.

This is a must see for everyone in the industry, in any industry actually. The year is 1996 and Steve Jobs is lamenting how Xerox had the world by a string, they just didn't know it.

Hear for yourself, possibly the first time a pundit refer to "toner-heads, copier-heads". Amazing.

Granted, those times were remarkable; Bill Gates is buying and selling the perennial operating system.  Wozniak is programming for days at a time and the first generation of computer geeks begin to take shape.

The status quo was being challenged by a unorganized, disconnected, computer nerds "doing it for fun".  Xerox, IBM, Burroughs, and others didn't see the PC revolution coming and when they did, most denied .  The rest, as they say, is history. They also say, "study history or be doomed to repeat it".

Look at your industry - There are two sides: the status quo and what I like to call the "Pirates".  The status quo employ marketing departments, game the search engines and confuse marketing content with content.  They purchase analysts and dictate to the market,  spinning a message through the ever dwindling and irrelevant equipment channel.  They tell us to sell equipment all the while knowing it is a dying argument.

There is no paper in the future because there is no future in paper.

Arrrg!  On the other side live the pirates, rogues, outcasts, crazies, disgruntled - the explorers, selling professionals, visionaries, lone wolves.  We'll play the game, find the edges and push. Of course we'll get in trouble, and from the outsider view, we will fail.  But failure has always been about getting back up, not quitting.   The ones on the sidelines never quit, do they? When things go well, everybody's a champio.

I guess what I like about this video is recognizing that this has all happened before.  The timing for such a revaluation couldn't be better.  Unlike the days of Young Jobs, we have instant connectivity to all the like minded.  The days of single voices, screaming in the night are gone.

The only question is what side do you call home?  

Do you feel the need to be dependent upon a " board of directors" or sales manager?  
Do you criticize free flowing organizational construct?  Is structure and policy more important?  
Do you manage to outside benchmarks and look for templates?  
Have you uttered and believed the phrase, "it's always been done that way"?  
Do you still think the "OEMs drive the industry"?  

Yes? Congratulations, you're part of the status quo - leave now and immerse yourself in the following movies/series(therapy): Oblivion, Cloud Atlas, V Is For Vendetta, Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, The Patriot, Tombstone & Saving Private Ryan. Not Glenn Gerry, Wall Street, or Boiler Room. Go...go now.

On the other hand, if you see through the manipulation that is an equipment quota (and still meet them), if you question studies reporting users demand mobile print, or print is growing.  If you do your "job" without going "to the office" and STILL required to show up for Monday morning sales meetings, if you've ever been "written up" - you could be Jobs-like, a Zig in the world of Zags.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Drop me a line.  I'm starting a group of fringe-thinking, bleeding-edgers.  We'll have a charter, but no Board of Directors.  We'll have meetings and adult beverages will be on the agenda.  Our goal will be to network within the group, share cutting edge ideas having fun and making money.

Moderator:


For our audience, what is 'toner'?


Jobs, "Its the black stuff..."

See the video here, http://youtu.be/_1rXqD6M614.



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Greg Walters, Incorporated
greg@grwalters.com
262.370.4193