Misdirection – Deflecting the real issues.

Zig Ziglar puts it best when he asked, “Are you a wandering generality or a meaningful specific?” The issue has always been sales or the lack there of, so regardless of the product the primary topic at just about every business meeting is how to get more. The tendency how ever to deal with the urgent vs. the important is a real one especially when your livelihood is at stake; the challenge however is getting a complete picture before taking action. Here is the problem, with so many experts saying that this is what you do first or this is more important than that, how do you discern when to scrap the experts and redesign the model so that you can actually understand it enough so that you can make it better. Could it be when it comes to business development, that we maybe asking the wrong people how to approach this process? Could it be that in this business environment where the buyers and their buying habits are nothing like anyone has encountered before that it is time to redesign the entire process? Could it be that all the trick plays or fancy programs and software that are being recommended are nothing more than a misdirection in order to deflect the real issue which is we are not selling enough cars and they really do not know how to fix it?  

Last night I saw the movie “Moneyball” and it made such an impression that I believed I shed a tear once or twice during the movie. My wife says that the older I get, the mushier I become and so I’m sticking to that as my reason for being emotionalJ. The movie was about the Oakland A’s baseball team and its General Managers who was given the impossible task of rebuilding the team with a budget that was less than half that of the competition. Although on the surface it seemed like an impossible mission, especially with the experts and their years of experience telling him that it could not be done. However, as fate would have it, the GM found an assistant that had an unconventional approach to picking players that destroyed the paradigms of the experts and those that were institutionalized by the system and with this new approach changed the game forever.  

What struck a chord in me were the similarities between that story and its players and the retail automotive industry and its dealers at this junction in time. We as an industry are in the process of re-inventing ourselves form the ground up to include how our products are made to how they are sold. In the movie, the “experts” continually reasoned that their years of experience and instinct was much more important and valuable than data the GM’s used to measure a players true worth to the team. With that being said, because we as leaders, managers and solution providers look to “experts” for answers and we use time as a measure of someone’s experience, I am curious to know how you define experience for our business model. Is it years of doing the same thing over and over again? Or is it the demonstration of their evolution and ability to adapt, improvise when necessary and rebuild from scratch when they had to? The reason this question is relevant and so important is that the information and mindset that got us to this point is not capable of getting us to the next stage of our evolution and unfortunately most experts are still relying on what use to be and using deflection and misdirection to support the recommendation.  

The harsh reality is that the industry is not changing, it has already changed and our approach to leading, managing and even selling has to change as well, so just like the Oakland A’s GM who had to find new ways of evaluating and attracting talent, we need to look at the real reason that dealerships are not selling cars and fix that first before more resources are spent on client generating programs. Its time to acknowledge that salespeople are the only ones that are face to face with the prospects, getting them to say yes or causing them to say no and consequently are at the center of the business development process.  Do managers know the numbers? I mean the current ratios of those that sell the product; do they know what the suspect-to-prospect to pipeline then to sold customer to returning customer ratios are? Do they know the activities or the specific areas of the salespersons skill needs to be improved? Do they have access to the educational tools that are needed to cause the improvement to take place? Or do they still believe if they put up a big tent and advertise more, the prospects will come? 

Are we still behaving as a “wandering generality?” -  Constantly being distracted by flashy lights, bright colors of the sales materials and ideas that promise results without work and without paying the price? Or, are we ready to become a “meaningful specific?” – Focused on demanding measurable results from the activities and solutions that drive business? Are we willing to ask the tough questions and demand process based solutions in the areas of selling and business development training or do we still believe that because the trainer is famous or works for a brand name company they must know what they are doing. Are you a wondering generality or a meaningful specific?