If You Give a Salesperson a Snow Cone
If you give a Salesperson a snow cone, they’ll want another.
And another.
The other Salespeople will gather around and shout words of praise to that Salesperson, like “You killed it!” “You crushed it” and “Yahtzee!” but they’ll be harboring jealousy.
They’ll believe that if given a patch with more significant snow cone potential, they would have many snow cones too. But I digress.
Once the Salesperson is full of Snow cones, they’ll try to figure out how to pace the next snow cone to land during the next Sales quarter.
And they’ll want it larger.
MUCH LARGER.
And they’ll possibly mention that they’ll need an Ice Cream Sundae this time instead of a Snow cone because that’s what the market need is saying.
There will be no evidence of this market need, and you’ll try to explain that you are just a Snow cone maker, but they won’t listen.
You’ll be passive-aggressively (or aggressive-aggressively) told that you are not doing enough to help and are hurting others by not just making Ice Cream Sundaes.
Try as you might, no one will support this not-so-crazy notion that you can’t just turn your business from Snow cones to Ice Cream Sundaes without significant changes to everything.
So, you attempt to make an Ice Cream Sundae out of Snow cones.
And when you deliver the snow cone/Ice Cream Sundae hybrid – you’ll get no thank you. No anything.
However, once you deliver the dessert to the Salesperson, they’ll be reminded of how much they like desserts – big desserts.
And chances are if they remember they like big desserts, they’ll never ask for a snow cone again – because they are too big for it now.
Note: Not all Sales folks are like this, but the above Sales Person does exist for too many people. This person also qualifies as a Climber (read more here).
Stay tuned for more from this series, including If you give a Creative Director a Croissant and If you give a Middle Manager a Mango.
REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Based on “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”