What if it were simple?

Clarity whispers.. are you listening? Pro tips, and Troll Tuesday winners!

BowTiedSalesGuy

Feb 09, 2023

The biggest roadblock is often ourselves.

Take me for example, I’ve been procrastinating trying to get this post done.

My procrastination cycle in a nutshell:

Idea to do this post → thinking it needs to be perfect → negative emotions arise → Procrastination

Nasty.

“Chad, what would it look like if it were simple?”

My mentor asked me this question many times.

To which I’d respond with a simple (and often correct) answer.

In the case of this post, I would just begin writing. Like I am doing now.

How many times do we grossly overcomplicate the next steps we need to take only to kick ourselves after the fact for overcomplicating the next step?

It happens a lot.

It’s part of the Human condition.

But just because it is “natural” doesn’t mean there aren’t tools to overcome it.

Introducing Clarity

No, not the stripper. But the little voice in your head that is completely rational and already knows the answer. Also known as “gut instinct”

What causes us emotional Pain is the clash between what Clarity tells us and what our other ego states tell us.

This clash = Emotional Pain

But when “everyone” is aligned then you become Clear.

Becoming (and staying) Clear is a skill

Let’s say despite your marketing teams best efforts, you still have prospects coming to your calls not knowing much about your company.

Not good.

You would think that in 2023 with all the worlds information at our fingertips that wouldn’t still be happening.. but it does.

Prospects are desperate for a signal they can trust amongst all the “noise”

This puts further pressure on *you* to fill in those information gaps. You’re starting at a bigger disadvantage because the expectation is for you to play the role of Google *and* salesman.

So what do most salespeople do? They complain while continuing to behave the same (like clowns)

What do some salespeople do? Try to adapt to the situation (often suboptimally)

And what do the *few* do? Solve the problem.

“But SalesGuy, how do I solve this problem?”

To which I’d respond:

“What would it look like if it were simple?”

Think about this for a second before continuing.

I’ll provide the answer below.

Problem: Prospects expect to pump us for information on our calls and our marketing team is incompetent. What do I do?

🤡: Complain and change nothing!

🤡: Expect marketing to change (a nice wish)

🤡: Book longer meetings so I have more time to dance for them

🐲(Clarity): Take the most common questions / topics and turn it into pre-selling collateral sent prior to our calls

There are many ways to do this. You can create a:

*Brief* Deck (no more than ~7 slides)
3-5 min walkthrough/overview video
One pager as per the course

You would then send and confirm they reviewed the collateral *prior* to your call with them. And track the send just to be sure.

“But my situation is unique!”

No, it’s not.

There are no new sales problems under the sun.

A budget issue for a startup isn’t really different than one for an enterprise.

Why?

Because the budget issue boils down to either:

Being genuinely broke
The Problem(s) you fix isn’t big enough to justify investment or buy-in from other stakeholders

That’s it.

It doesn’t matter what you sell. The underlying factors don’t change.

So how should we respond to a prospect with low budget?

Well, what would we say if it were simple?

Startup: We don’t have budget for this

🐲: Are you saying you can’t find the money regardless if the issues we could fix justified the investment cost?

Enterprise: We don’t have budget for this

🐲: Ah so even if we made a business case to senior leadership that made financial sense, they still wouldn’t find this issue urgent enough to allocate budget to fix it?

What would the simple answer be to your “complicated” situation?

The possible answers are always finite. It’s just your emotional reaction gets in the way of solving it.