- November 26, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Randy Newman has written a lot of hit songs. The two most popular were probably Short People and I Love LA but he also wrote the music for Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.
In 1970, Three Dog Night recorded one of his songs called Mama Told Me (Not to Come).
If you don’t remember or weren’t around to hear one of the first hits of the 1970’s, you should probably watch/listen to the song, Mama Told Me (Not to Come) below and pay attention to the words in the chorus.
There is so much going on here. First, it’s Three Dog Night. Not A Dog Night, or a Dog Fight, or a Night, or a Dog, but Three Dog Night. That’s very specific and leaves no room for ambiguity about how many dogs or the time of day. When selling, your choice of words are very important and you must always speak with that degree of specificity!
Then there’s the chorus: “Mama told me not to come. That’s not the way to have fun, son.”
They’re talking about a rule-breaker who came to the party after being told not to, but, mom isn’t anti-fun, she is anti-party. “Have fun but do it the right way. Listen to me, and don’t go to that party.”
Them there’s some really great rules for selling but if you’re going to break a rule, make sure it’s not sales process! There are plenty of other rules to break, especially those that are meant to prevent you from reaching decision makers!
If you start with the having fun part you can’t go wrong. Most selling is WAY too serious, way too dependent on bullet points from slides, talking points from company narratives, and the oh, so boring vomiting of company and product information. Where’s the fun in all of that? And if you don’t bring the fun, who wants to spend any time with you? Differentiate!
Then there’s the “don’t go” message and it’s so spot on! The party is the wrong type of fun.
If we put it in the context of Baseline Selling, running from 3rd Base to Home is a happy place for most salespeople. It’s where they are encouraged to talk about capabilities, value, solutions, deliverables, make presentations and/or demos, propose, quote, and recommend. That’s the selling stuff they are most comfortable with, most familiar with, and most eager to do. But there’s a problem. They have been warned not to go there because they didn’t do the more important selling stuff between 1st base and 2nd base and between 2nd base and 3rd base.
If you aren’t versed in the nuances of Baseline Selling, I’m sure the previous paragraph made little sense so you’ll have to watch the video below to understand what I’m talking about, and you must stay to the end or you’ll miss the entire point of this post.
When you follow the sales process, good things will happen. And when you choose to skip around or ignore milestones in the sales process entirely, bad things will keep happening to you. So have fun, but don’t go there (3rd base) before it’s appropriate. Listen to your sales manager because they told you not to go there!