I welcome everyone to the 2nd installment of Bravado Book Club. Last weeks assignment was Chapter 2 "Entrepreneurship, Elasticity and Ed-Med". Hope everyone who participated in the reading enjoyed and hope everyone (if you read it or not) provides their thoughts on the takeaways whether it be positive or negative.
Summary:
Pink provides a great template for a short summary of a point you about to make calling it the Pixar Pitch (which will be discussed more in chapter 7). He uses it to tell the story of how salespeople are everywhere due to the many entrepreneurs in this country, companies demand having elastic skills in every role with sales being a skill needed, and the boom in education and health sectors which central purpose is moving others.
Entrepreneurship: Pink tells the story of Brooklyn Brine, an artisanal pickle store in Brooklyn. Stores like these with ~10 employees are a major part of the US economy. These small companies, unlike large organizations who have sales be a specialized department, require all of their employees to wear multiple hats and the biggest one is the "selling cap". Pinks then lists some key statistics on the continued rise of entrepreneurship. The US has 21 "non employer" businesses (think consultants or electricians), 30% of Americans work on their on, 54% of millennials have started or plan to start their business. And through websites like Etsy or Kickstarter their will continue to be this large rise of non employer businesses.
Elasticity:
Pink tells the story of the company Atlassian. Sure many of us are familiar but its a software to support project management. Revenue was $100 million and they don't have a single "sales person". This is because everyone is a sales person. Their CEO discusses the the difference between a product people buy vs people get sold. Atlassian's sales cycle is done via customers starting a trial of a product and their "consultants" provide info to the prospect and t don't provide "fast expiring discounts". Atlassian even has "forward deployed engineers" who handle majority of the typical AE role. These engineers can have more technical conversations with the client and provide better feedback to the engineering team on how to improve the product. Pink then talks about through higher competition people need elastic skills and the skill everyone needs is persuasion/selling
Ed-Med: Pink starts by talking about how Education and Health services are the fastest growing sector. A teachers mission is to move people and a nurse states "Moving people is majority of what we do in health care". Teachers are selling to their students that this science lesson is interest. Physical Therapists are asking people to hand over resources (their time, attention and effort. Pink later talks about Irritation vs Agitation. Irritation is challenging them to do something WE want them to do. Agitation is challenging them to do something THEY want to do. Pink gives a great example of if a nurse solely relies on the patient thinking the nurse is the expert, there is a limitation on how well the treatment is. So the nurse gets them to move by saying to the patient "I need your expertise" allowing the patient to move themselves.
Takeaways:
1)The Pixar template listed below can be a great template for discussing customer case stories:
Once upon a time ______
Every day______
One day_____
Because of that _______
Because of that _______
Until finally____
2) Working yourself is a lot more popular than you think, and is easier then ever. So if I ever want to do so, I know its a very attainable thing.
3) Even hipster Pickle people in Brooklyn are in sales, so if you deal with them acting high and mighty, tell them to f off since they are in sales
4) Atlassian might think they don't have true sales people but the LinkedIn screenshot shows they actually have 2k sales employees, not just engineers. But this chapter shows the importance of truly being an expert to your customer and not just being a "I have people skills" AE
5) Asking myself how can I be better at agitation with potential prospects
Members only
8 comments