Friday Fun Double - Obscure Engineering Conversion Factors and Mixed Metaphor Month

Obscure Engineering Conversion Factors

[Warning – some possibility of political incorrectness]

Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond

Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour = Knotfurlong

365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer = 1 Lite year

16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling

Half a large intestine = 1 semicolon

1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope

Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi

1,000,000 aches = 1 megahurtz

Basic unit of laryngitis = 1 hoarsepower

Shortest distance between two jokes = a straight line

Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram

2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton

2000 mockingbirds = two kilomockingbirds

1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 Fig Newton

1000 ccs of wet socks = 1 literhosen

8 nickels = 2 paradigms

And my favorite arcane unit of measure:  Furlongs per Fortnight.

Mixed Metaphor Month

Vote for the worst (or best, depending on how you view this…!) mixed metaphor (all real, captured from various blogs and articles):

1. “While it may seem like good sense to cover all your bases, throwing too much at your prospect actually weakens your message. Even a short diversion from focus can confuse the issue and cause your prospect to tune out during an otherwise stellar case. You make your prospect do all the work of picking out and remembering the most relevant pieces.”

Love it:  “Cover bases, throw too much, tune out, stellar case, picking out pieces.”

2. “If you have a presentation that runs two to three hours or more, you’re starting to cover a lot of ground. A theme is helpful in tying ideas together and making it easier for your prospect to see the relationship between different sections by providing a common thread.”

And:  “Cover ground, tying together, see relationship, common thread.”

3. “With these ideas in your back pocket, you can break through to the toughest of clients and keep your organization firing on all cylinders no matter how much of a time crunch you are in.”

Short but packed!  “Back pocket, break through, fire on all cylinders, time crunch.”  I think this is the winner…!

4. "And like the U.N. Security Council Members, it only takes one veto to kill an entire deal. Because of the proliferation of stakeholders needed to approve a deal to get it off the ground, a sure thing can become dead in the water long after the sales cycle seems over."

Better have the Security Council equipped with both wings and fins…

5. "Our reps use our … platform which provides the toolset they need to spread your compelling sales message and get those who buy in the wiggle room they need for others to sign off on their decision."

This one mixes a bad case of rampaging pronouns with toolsets and wiggle rooms!

6. "Modern decision-makers have a million things to take care of, so even a small objection or a momentary scheduling snag can threaten to eject them out of your funnel as their plate fills up with other priorities."

Wow…  Don’t people ever proof their posts?

Others (conversion factors/units or mixed metaphors) to add?  Have a Happy (Calendar) New Year in any case!

Team Selling and Demonstrating – Is (Dramatically) More Likely to Result in Closed Business

The fine folks at Gong have released another intriguing study.  They report,

“The next time your sales manager joins one of your sales calls or demos for the sake of “team selling,” be sure to thank him or her.

You may be 258% more likely to close that deal than if you flew solo.”

Holy herd (well, 2) of cows…!  This is a terrific insight – and surprising – at least initially…

I wonder if there is any correlation between longevity of the sales person and closed business?  In other words, there are many new or newish sales people in enterprise software, for one reason or another – and I suspect that many of the calls recorded with a sales manager present are situations where the managers are doing an in-person “ride-along”… 

Similarly, it would be interesting to see the data and results when the second person on these calls is a sales manager vs. presales person (with the same thoughts about longevity).  Many of the organizations that I work with have presales people with often much greater average longevity with their company than their sales counterparts… 

Great study, in any case – you can take a look here.  

Capturing and Leveraging Tribal Knowledge

What is Tribal Knowledge?

“Tribal knowledge is any unwritten information that is not commonly known by others within a company. This term is used most when referencing information that may need to be known by others in order to produce quality product or service.”

Translated, this typically means that someone has the knowledge, and (in theory) passes it along to others in need.  However, tribal knowledge fails in an organization when (1) people leave without communicating what they know or (2) those with the knowledge assume that others have it as well (when they don’t) or (3) those with the knowledge don’t even think about passing it along…

How can modern sales and presales teams capture and leverage valuable Tribal Knowledge?

Consider the last sales kickoff meeting you went to…. It is likely there was a combination of formal knowledge sharing (e.g., sales success stories segments) and informal sharing (e.g., at the bar, “Hey, Bob, what did you do in that demo for xxx that worked so well…?”).  The formal sessions are not a concern – but many “nuggets” likely can be gathered from the informal interactions.

Accordingly, contemplate implementing a formal segment in your upcoming sales kickoff meeting and/or your team’s regular conference calls that asks the members to each share one idea or learning they experienced recently.  These sessions can be free-form or structured to focus on Discovery, demos, sales strategy, or other specific topics.

Other suggestions?