This html-coded online version of the Wombat Final 15/5/06 9:12 AM -- wombatbook.pdf, was prepared by Darlene Sartore with some additions, clarifications, minor adaptations, color texting, and numbered paragraphs to make the text easier to use in follow-along reading and referencing during dialogs.... This version is for use only by course presenters certified by An Ever Better World Internet Academy. Permission granted from author on March 5, 2007.
1. It has become a cliché to say that 'Information is the principal commodity of our age' but it cannot be said enough that a clever company is one that gets a much better return on information. To do so, it needs not just one, but two enterprise software upgrades. The two upgrades required are:
2. In business, as in the military, we want to have an 'unfair' advantage over our competitors. Better flexibility in changing markets. Better customer response. Faster company growth. The clever company’s success depends on the quality of its information and the speed with which that information can be shared throughout the enterprise.
3. Recently, a client of mine made a $16 million investment in the SAP system – an enterprise-wide business software upgrade. SAP is one of the largest software companies in the world and has developed clever systems that enable companies of all sizes to link their business processes, tying together disparate business functions, and helping the whole enterprise run more smoothly.
4. My client’s investment in SAP will integrate the entire organisation so information can be shared in real-time by employees, suppliers and distributors for a better return on information.
5. But, for a clever company to secure an unfair advantage over its competitors it can’t do just what they do, it needs to do much more. For a MUCH better return on information the clever company must also take the opportunity to also invest in an upgrade of the brain software of the enterprise.
6. Augmenting the SAP investment, my client has also decided to upgrade the brain software currently being used by their employees, enterprise-wide.
Software for your brain
7. Your company’s brains are currently using logic as your primary brain software. Logic was installed into stakeholders' brains by the education system which imported it from Europe 200 years ago. Logic was introduced into the European education system by Thomas Aquinas in the middle ages. Thomas got it from Plato and Aristotle. Logic was designed by these esteemed yet ancient Greeks 2500 years ago. There seems little point in expecting too much from a business software upgrade if the company’s brains are still using 2500-year-old brain software!
Desktops and Necktops
8. FACT: Today’s desktop PC is 2 gigabytes (2 billion bytes) or more. In each employee’s brain a byte is the strength of a synapse. But each employee’s ‘necktop computer’ has a lot more than two gigabytes. It’s a vast network of about 1000 billion neurons each one with up to 50,000 connecting wires (dendrites) with synapses.
9. So, multiply 1000 billion neurons by 50,000 synapses by the number of your company’s employees . . . Wow! That’s a lot of enterprise brainpower leased monthly via the company payroll. The brainpower available to each employee’s necktop is about 10,000 trillion bytes. To match that on a neuron-by-neuron basis a desktop would need to be able to perform 1 million, trillion arithmetic operations per second.
10. FACT: Compare any necktop with the largest supercomputers likely to be developed over the next decade. These will probably not attain speeds in excess of 1 trillion arithmetic operations per second which is about onemillionth of the computation rate of each of the necktops on the payroll.
11. FACT: The enterprise is preposterously over endowed with thinking hardware but it may be dangerously short on brain software. I would expect a clever company to change that.
Selling
12. To call oneself a 'salesperson' is just like, in some circles, admitting to cannibalism! This is partly due to a curious myth about the human skill of selling which should have been shattered long ago. The myth goes something like this: ‘She is a good saleswoman because she has the gift of the gab’, or ‘He’s a good talker. He should be a salesman.’ This is just so much nonsense!
SELLING IS A SKILL OF THE BRAIN!
13. If every week, on payday, your sales manager had to pin your paycheque on that part of your anatomy which is the source of your productivity – he would pin your paycheque on your head, because inside your head lies your ultimate profit centre.
What is the relationship between thinking and selling?
14. Thinking is the most fundamental and important human skill. Thinking is how we make use of information in order to control our behaviour. According to ancient wisdom, you are what you think – 'As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he'.
15. Skill in communication and the use and arrangement of information are what 'selling' or 'salesmanship' is all about. So is leadership. If you wish to change your behaviour, you first have to change what you think. If you wish to change someone else’s behaviour, you are first going to have to help that person to change what he or she thinks.
16. Thinking is the ability to lead one’s self. Leadership is the ability to get others to lead themselves. So is selling. Like all skills, these can be learned and developed.
17. Today, information is the currency of existence, and the value of information lies in the way it is arranged. Selling has to do with thinking. Selling has to do with information. Selling has to do with the way information is arranged and rearranged to get attention and then produce a change in human perception. Selling is the most fundamental and important social skill. It is a skill that anyone can develop provided he or she is willing to make the commitment to practise arranging and rearranging information.
18. And now we come to a critical insight about selling. This is also one of the great misunderstandings about selling and leadership. The most successful do understand it, the others don’t. You will never, never, never break through until you own this insight about human behaviour. It has to do with being able to lead horses to water but not being able to make them drink. The critical insight is:
Only the customer controls CHECKMATE.
19. Since CHECKMATE, the decision to buy, is an electrochemical event that happens in the brain of another individual, it’s no surprise that you cannot control CHECKMATE. That is why there is no such thing as salespeople ‘closing the sale’ – only the customer can close the sale.
20. However, you can control the CHECK move which makes it possible (but not certain) that the customer may CHECKMATE.
Feedback
21. How do you get the feedback you need to keep yourself on track? ... What can you do when you fall in a hole or get caught in a sales slump?... One of the simplest tactics is to use questions.
22. Here are 11 questions that you can ask yourself to produce the feedback you need to stay in control of how you plot your business course. Each question produces its own effect. Use the one you need to produce the effect you want (desire), at any particular moment.
Rejection and Call Reluctance
23. Whenever you get stuck in selling or leadership it’s because you haven’t asked yourself these ten questions. These ten questions are an instant antidote to rejection, call reluctance, and the other terminal sales diseases that are brought on by trying to CHECKMATE.
24. To any salesperson who is still trying to use ‘clever closing techniques’ – it’s time to stop! You are now doing business in the new millennium. Leave the oldsell ideas of the 1950s behind and catch up to reality or you may miss out on the greatest business opportunities of today’s global marketplace.
TT – the Newsell Management System
25. TT is a simple and powerful way to manage your two strategic business resources: time and energy. TT is the Newsell Management System and is an easy but laserlike system for the daily management of your UNCHECKTOCHECK moves. TT focuses on two important business opportunities – Tomorrow and Today:
Tomorrow
26. In the Newsell Management System, it's vital every day to take a stab at predicting how many UNCHECKTOCHECK moves you will do the next day. It doesn’t matter what actually ends up happening. All that is required is that you try to guess at the number of UNCHECKTOCHECK moves you will do tomorrow.
Today
27. In the Newsell Management System, it’s also vital every day to record exactly the number of UNCHECKTOCHECK moves you made the previous day. This includes all voicemail, email/postmail and ‘meetmail’ UNCHECKTOCHECK moves.
One Step Each Day
28. Just keeping these two Tomorrow/Today measurements every day may not seem like much to you now but, as you will soon see, when you do use the TT – Tomorrow/Today method you will be amazed at the results. Progress begins a step at a time. There is no sudden leap to greatness. Your success lies in what you do day by day. You will be in good company if you follow this advice and just record your Tomorrow/Today activity, a day at a time:
‘The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion . . . It is the one who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider, and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation, persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.’ - Alexander Graham Bell
‘Little by little does the trick.’
Aesop
‘All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy,
and great things in that which is small.’
Lao-Tzu
‘A jug fills drop by drop.’
Gautama Buddha
‘Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.’
Publius Syrius
‘Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘God is in the details.’
Albert Einstein
This html-coded online version of the Wombat Final 15/5/06 -- wombatbook.pdf, was prepared by Darlene Sartore with some minor adaptations and color texting, for use only by course presenters certified by Ideal Network Academy. Use permission herein granted from author Michael Hewitt-Gleeson on March 5, 2007.
