Sales Rep Optimism - Key to Winning

After watching today's 5-minute video on SellingPower.com, I thought about the psychologist's one-sided premise. I'd like to present Side B to complement his hypothesis.  He took the employer-centric view because he wants to sell candidate evaluation services.  He suggests that companies must look for people who have optimism built into their DNA because it can't be taught.  I agree, but I also believe that there are company-centric and transactionally oriented companies like Oracle, HP, EMC, Sprint, Salesforce.com and many others that cause sales reps who are naturally optimistic to suppress this trait because they just can bring themselves to opt-in.

It's likely that an innately optimistic sales person with the necessary professional and technical skills along with a natural competitive drive will produce average results if their company does not possess its own DNA traits that build employee and customer allegiance.  Otherwise, sales reps won't commit their personal resources, only their time and physical energy.  Yuck!

New Paradigm Overexposes Kodak

In the early 1990's who could have imagined that Canon Sure Shots, Blackberries, iPhones and iPads would be looming on the horizon?

Market leaders manage their dynamic product portfolios to keep pace with trends so that new paradigms aren't killers.

Kodak took its eye off the mark.  Now, it will file for Chapter 11 because there remains only small well-defined niches for its best-in-class traditional products.  In fact, in order to raise cash, there's talk about Kodak selling digital imaging patent rights.

Who is being held accountable for all those grandmothers whose shares of Kodak have dropped from $6 to $.75 per share ?  Who was in charge when the paradigm shift began?

Kodak was unwilling to respond to the paradigm shift that wrecked its dynasty.  The same fate sounded the death knell for many product-centric leaders. Polaroid is mostly in the past.  Digital Equipment didn't want to cannibalize its minicomputer business. Tektronix thought its proprietary hi-res graphics technology could never be topped.  Buggy whip manufacturers didn't recognize that they were in the transportation business.

What a great case study for innovators.

Advertisers Use Mediocre Content

If you study "product-centric" ads, you'll notice the same trite phrases and buzz words that everyone else uses. They don't do a good job of setting themselves apart from all the rest.

Media vendors, whose end game is to run the ad [TV, Radio, Print ...], would prefer that clients provide content, but most don't have a content portfolio for them to draw upon.  So, the media vendor scrambles to author content that doesn't differentiate their client from others who are hoping that an undifferentiated market will "buy my stuff".

If you haven't taken the time to continually update your content portfolio to be aligned with your marketing and business development strategy, you are making a big mistake because you won't be able to create a differentiating theme for a well-defined audience and produce measurable results for the call to action you've set as your goal for every promotional campaign.

Deductive Advertising Is Better

Don't invest in inductive advertising [here's my product - figure out what you can do with it].

Instead, only invest in deductive advertising [if you have this problem or opportunity, then this solution is right for you].