For Best Results - Stay in the Box

"You've got to think outside the box!" This is the rallying cry that unites sales organizations across America.

Sales are down? Think outside the box!

Leads are drying up? Think outside the box!

Sounds great but what does it mean and how do I do it? I'll tell you what it means but let me implore you to please stop doing it - at least for a little while.

Back in the early 90's there was a popular puzzle that showed a square made of 3rows of dots. The idea was to connect all the dots by drawing four straight lines without lifting one's pencil from the paper. Seminar organizers delighted in showing this puzzle to a bewildered audience. The trick, as you've probably already discovered, is that your lines must extend beyond the boundaries of the square so that instead of drawing lines that are perpendicular, you have angled lines to connect the dots in the middle of the puzzle.

When you extended the lines beyond the boundaries formed by the dots, you were thinking "outside the box". Brilliant!

While the coining of this phrase was not nearly as exciting an event as the invention of the foam rubber tomahawk (which happened at roughly the same time) the puzzle was fun and the message was clear: being constrained by old ways of thinking limits one's abilities to solve problems. Organizations needed to become more creative as challenges became more daunting.

Unfortunately, just as one can have too many foam rubber tomahawks, one can take the notion of creativity too far. For the most part, sales people don't need to think outside the box.

Here's what sales people and sales organizations should focus on:

1. Have a complete understanding of your product or service. What does it do? Whom does it help? What can't it do? What does your competitor's product do better than yours?2)
2. Identify your target audience. Each of your products and services is perfect for someone, good for others, ineffective or meaningless or a poor value to all the rest.
3. Perfect your unique selling proposition. You must be able to explain the reasons why your solutions are unique to your company.
4. Compile a list of all "perfect" and "good" prospects. Be honest. Do some research and if someone doesn't need what you sell, don't waste your time trying to convince them otherwise.
5. Call on those prospects. If a prospect is perfect for your company, you must never give up. Never giving up on the perfect prospect is far more productive than dreaming up creative reasons why a fringe prospect should consider buying from you.

This is about as "in the box" as you can get. There is nothing creative about it. Football teams would refer to it as "blocking and tackling".

I guess there isn't anything sexy about a rallying cry that declares, "Let's do more blocking and tackling!"

But, that is what is needed during tough times.