Write a humorous article that touches on sports, sex, and business? Doug Wagner rises to the challenge.
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Locker Room Banter – Behind the Scenes
In our writer’s discussion group, Thomas Fiffer (Executive Editor for The Good Men Project) made a request for contributors to write a cross over piece and tie our specialities (mine is business and leadership) the Sex, Love, and Relationships section.
Me (Doug Wagner): Bouncing around ideas in my head on the business-related side.
Thomas Fiffer: Doug, Those idea-balls will bounce better if they’re fully inflated.
Me: Shoot: business, sex and relationships, and deflated balls…. bit a challenge putting that together. Business, sports and relationships cross-over.
Challenge accepted.
The Business
I get to work with a lot of companies and we have some interesting conversations about growing their businesses. What if one of those companies was….
Best Balls Inc.
Best Balls Inc. sells balls.
Footballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, squash balls, ping pong balls, baseballs, golf balls, medicine balls … balls of all sorts. They have a few in house brands that they manufacture — they source the rest from ball makers. If you need a ball, they probably make it, have it or can order it.
One day, the CEO was meeting with his senior sales leaders and a few external advisers. He proclaimed: “We have too many balls here that are not moving fast enough. How do we get our balls into the hands of more people who will appreciate the variety and quality we offer?”
Selling Goldilocks
Inflated Pressure
One of the sales leaders spoke up: “I suggest that we use a lot more pressure to get customers to buy balls. We can use training and incentives to encourage the sales team to close harder. We could make our balls hard to get and create a false sense of scarcity.”
The CEO pointed out the flaw in that approach: “I think that would lead to angry or frustrated customers who would not want our balls anymore. People unhappy with the experience would cause returns to happen faster and higher than we currently expect so we would miss our targets anyways. Ultimately, we don’t want our customers getting our competitors balls.” That idea was just too much pressure.
Low Pressure
The senior sales executive: “Currently our sales teams are too soft with prospects. Sometimes they are under-confident and are too focused on getting the prospects to like them to really sell the features of our balls. Other times when the prospects push back they deflate and undervalue the quality of our balls and services. It may seem like low pressure makes it easier to grab them but people take longer to make a decision and then they don’t have enough balls when they really need them.”The way they were selling was just too low on value.
Just Right
Me: “It seems to me that a successful sales process would be somewhere in between. People have to absorb a lot of information, make a ton of decisions every day, and really need to be coached through the sales process so they can ultimately make an informed decision that is in their best interest. It is best if you are not too attached to any one customer buying as there are plenty of other customers out there who could use your balls. If you try too hard to force them to make a play they are more likely to throw the opportunity away. If you leave them a back door they are more likely to give it a shot.” My approach was just right.
Relationships
The CEO: “Our balls meet the exacting needs of our customers all the way from professionals to recreational users. We use quality materials and innovative manufacturing techniques. We test our balls regularly to ensure they perform and measure up to standards. What else can we do to serve our customers well?”
Thomas Fiffer: “Let’s deflate a myth about business. It’s not your balls but your relationships that matter.”
A sales leader: “Our balls don’t matter? What do you mean?”
Me: “Here’s something you may not have heard:”
“All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.” ~ The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.
“Assuming your balls are high quality and at least a few of your competitors have great balls, then you need to deliver value in other ways. The quality and depth of your relationship with customers becomes paramount. You might even want to start calling them clients. That establishes a mindset of a value-added professional rather than a commodity.”
Dixie Gillaspie (Senior Managing Editor for The Good Men Project): “And it does not take balls to build relationships.”
Thomas Fiffer: “That’s true. It takes empathy and compassion.”
Me: “Exactly. Building relationships takes empathy and compassion. When you come from a place of serving there is no need to take business so personal and therefore the stress of rejection goes down. Big balls, little balls or no balls; most people can, and do, sell all the time. Your company is pretty unique in the requirement to embrace the “you need to have balls to sell” mentality. When you aren’t actually selling balls, embracing that mentality puts you in conflict with prospects and clients and increases your own stress levels because you believe selling is about overcoming people and making them do things. Nobody wins in that case.”
The CEO: “That is a good way of putting it. And it isn’t just your client relationships, but your networking and personal relationships that benefit. Well-rounded people roll with the challenges of life much better and can bounce back faster. Our top sellers are a good mix of extroverts and introverts and the bases are covered in representing the genders as well. I think they naturally embrace the characteristics that matter; empathy, compassion, relationships and coming from a place of serving. Helping clients win.”
Me: “Making it easy to find, buy, and work with you can be another value-add. If you know that footballs get worn out and wrinkled after half a season, then you need to be working with your clients to ensure that never have to play with old balls.
The Senior Sales Executive: “Can I quote you all on those points when talking to my team?”
Thomas Fiffer: It’s OK to quote me. Thanks for asking.
Me: “Sure thing.”
Dixie Gillaspie (whose nickname happens to be “Dixie Dynamite”): “Boom.”
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Photo: Flickr/DeclanTM
Good trio! Sales, relationships and business truly come together. You definitely can find resemblance to sports too. If we would use our business acumen at home, I believe many more relationships would flourish. Hardest part is to address serious topic funnily. In addition to writing about relationships that also goes for business and relationships themselves.