Selling in a Time of Corona – S1E9 – David, Goliath and Sales Slingers

Malcolm Gladwell:     I arrived at the book idea, because I had done this piece for the New Yorker some years ago called “How David beats Goliath”, about a guy out in California who coached his daughter's 12 year old basketball team, all the way to the national championships, even though they were a group entirely without talent or skill. He did it by, for those of you who are basketball fans, by playing the full court press, every minute of every game. A really, really, really radical form of that full guard press, the most aggressive form you can. And I was, I just thought that story was hilarious. But also really interesting because I loved the way in which he refused to give up. So, he was a guy who knew nothing about basketball, coaching a team of girls without any obvious skills in the area. And the normal response to people in those situations is either to say, it's pointless and lose by 30 points a game. Or to try desperately to play by the rules of everyone else. Like to play the way everyone else is playing and try and catch up, which would be impossible in a season. He chose Option C, which was to hell with it. Let's play in this way, that's so deeply subversive that, you know, the other team isn't going to know what hit them.

Elliot Epstein - intro: So, someone ate a bat apparently and the world turned upside down. Hi, I'm Elliot Epstein. And I’ve spent the last 20 years of my life coaching, consulting, training, and speaking about all facets of sales development, pitching, presentations, negotiation, the C-suite sales calls and all of the various components in the sales cycle in between. And now we find ourselves in a world that's very foreign. Welcome to Selling in a Time of Corona.

Elliot Epstein:             That intro was the fascinating Malcolm Gladwell, author of books you've probably read or should read like; Blink, Outliers, The Tipping Point, and his latest, Talking to Strangers. He also has an amazing podcast series worth checking out called Revisionist History, where he takes a new look at things we thought were historically true and flips it on its head. One of his disruptive stories, questions what really might have happened in the famous biblical story of David and Goliath.

Elliot Epstein:             So here's my take on how it directly affects how you might win business during and beyond COVID-19. But before we get to the sales opportunities, let's go back to the 11^th century BC where the Israelite-Philistine rivalry was even greater than that of Trump and Obama. War was declared by each side nominating their greatest warrior to fight Mano a Mano with the victor taking the spoils, and I presume any future TV rights. The Philistines had a Master Chef style competition and selected Goliath, the six-foot nine giant, armoured up with a sword sharp enough to turn his opponent into instant sashimi. The Israelites went into the draft and selected their star young talent, up and coming slinger champion, David. David was 22 years old and had not been wasting his time at Schoolies. He had been using his slinger, not a V-shape slingshot as most believe, but a powerful rock-filled pouch, he deployed for some time to kill animals, threatening his sheep. The story is commonly told is that the gigantic armour-clad Goliath was taken down by one single rock shot from David Slinger in the greatest underdog victory in history until the Mighty Ducks, of course.

Gladwell asks us to reconsider this story with some known facts. Goliath was a true giant. That is someone afflicted with giantism, with medical conditions, including poor vision and poor movement. He would not be able to easily evade a rock being slung at twice the speed of a fastball in baseball. David had been using his sling since he was a kid and had practiced and probably perfected his action more than Michael Jordan shot baskets. The money shot, so to speak was not a fluke. It was the inevitable result of a skilled practitioner against the cumbersome, restricted opponent. So, who was really the underdog?

Fast forward to the year 2020, where we are facing clients who appear huge, insurmountable, armoured up with processes, procurement and incumbent suppliers of the things you sell, but are they? Do they also have poor vision of how to extricate themselves from the ravages of COVID-19? Are they also restricted by tight fitting budgets and limited capacity to move easily?

Elliot Epstein:             More importantly, what are your biggest rocks and what are the skills you can bring to the table immediately that others can't?

Here's some of the rocks you may have that I've seen work exceptionally well in the past.

Number 1 - There is no sales department anymore. It's everyone. The operations manager has contacts, the CEO, the head of delivery or support, the new intern. Everyone. Get together, discuss everyone's connections and build new opportunities together. Without the demarcation of whose account it is, or job titles. There are bound to be untapped prospects among the whole team, prospects who trust someone in your organization. Simply allocate the right people to work together on the right opportunities. It's not weird for your sales director to work with say, your IT manager, or even the intern, and even let him lead the conversation, if the IT manager’s uncle or  previous boss is now a key prospect. Former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi once said “There are two types of people, those who do the work and those you take the credit”. Try to be in the first group. There is less competition there. The only boundaries that should be in place right now, are those restricting people lining up at the coffee shop. Certainly not in prospecting.

Number 2 -  I'm sure you've guessed by now that the underdog in this podcast is the client. The opportunity is ripe right now, to take away the immediate pain with simple, bold statements flung at the right decision makers. The strategy of building up to your argument and slowly presenting a business case is now as valid as Trump's “We wouldn't have all these cases of coronavirus, if we didn't do all this testing”. Genius.

However, when you contact your clients, whether it's LinkedIn, a phone call, Zoom, a walking meeting at the beach, or by air balloon, all you need is one simple, bold outcome-based statement.

Here are some examples:

1 - For a $100,000, we can make you totally legally compliant across the whole company in 12 weeks.

2- If you work with us right now, we have the resources to add 15% margin on every order you get from your customers. We have 70 people available right now. First in best dressed, including 30 who have won awards, working on the biggest transition in corporate history. They're available to you, if you'd like them

3 - With respect, Mr. Customer, you haven't got time to go to tender or RFI. It will cost you about five to 10% of the contract anyway. And about eight weeks to evaluate. We're happy for you to benchmark our pricing based on your previous analytics, but we’re delivering this solution right now for Intergalactic Enterprises in only 4 weeks. And we estimate we saved them $300,000 per quarter, and we can do that for you as well.

So, to all of you Davids, and Davidas, it's time to put on your sandals, walk down the mountain, fling your slingers and create your own history. And finally, to those concerned about client budgets, I'll leave you with the words of William Feather. “A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn't stop us from buying it.”

Stay safe, stay positive. Remember your ears are safe. I wore full body armour during this entire podcast.

Take care of yourselves, till next time.