Jay M. Nunez: 2015

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Happy New Year!

What a Year we have had and what a Year we have planned.......

Today it is our first Birthday as a blog and what a year it was we have grown a lot in our Firs year but we plan to do a lot more.

The first thing you will notice is our new look blog. We also have added a translate function so people are able to translate the blog into their preferred lanquage.

This year we have got some Q and A's starting in February with some of the Worlds best miniature painters.

And you never know we may be having another giveaway!

We would like to say thank you to everyone for making our First year such a great one! And joining us as we all try to become better painters

Thank you!

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Rapp Passes

Former manager Vern Rapp died today, Thursday, just missing the new year:

The Cardinals hired him before the 1977 season as the managerial replacement to Red Schoendienst.

Rapp, then 49, led the Redbirds to an 83-79 record, a third-place finish that marked an 11-game improvement from 1976. But the hard-nosed managerial tactics he formed in the minors didn’t always mesh with his new players.

”With Vern, it was such a big transition, ” former Cardinals pitcher Bob Forsch once told the Post-Dispatch. ”From laid-back Red to Vern. Vern was more military, where he’d say, ‘I’ll even tell you how to dress.’ He stood (coach) Sonny Ruberto on a trunk in spring training and said, ‘This is how to wear your uniforms.'”

Rapp managed just a short time, going 140-160 for the Cardinals and Reds. His poor start with Cincinnati led to the hiring of Pete Rose.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

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93.2353% Of Plan

As I write this post, I’m 93.2353% toward a goal I set for all of us. It’s simply unacceptable for me not to meet plan, so I need your help.

Many of you know that I’ve supported Charity:Water for a number of years. I started this year’s campaign about a week ago. In a very short time, through your generosity, we’ve raised $7925–so far. For those who’ve contributed, even just a few dollars, I can’t thank you enough. Already, we’ve raised enough money to provide water for several hundred people.

This year, I set a several goals:

I would match contributions dollar for dollar for the first $3500 in contributions. We’ve met that goal. I’ve matched the first $3500 in contributions!
I wanted to encourage this community to contribute at least $5000 (without the match). We have just a little way to go.
I wanted to raise a total of $8500, with my match. This would put total contributions over the past several years well over $30K. At this moment, we’re 93.2353% of plan!

If 24 of you contribute $25 to Making A Difference 2015/2016, we will exceed our goal!

If more of you contribute, we will blow the plan away!

My competitiveness as a sales professional makes it personally unacceptable not to exceed plan. So I won’t stop until we exceed that goal.

But this is really not about exceeding plan, it’s about Making A Difference and having an impact. Everyone reading this article is relatively fortunate. Our basic needs are met, we don’t have to worry about drinking water, food, or anything else.

Hundreds of millions of people don’t have that luxury. They wake up every morning, having to worry about getting enough water to live. They worry about getting clean water so they don’t have health problems. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war!

100% of the contributions you make to Charity:Water go to people in need, providing wells and clean water. Please join your colleagues who have already been so generous. Together, we can continue to Make A Difference.

Let’s keep doing GOOD work. Over the past few years, we’ve helped communities in East Africa and Southeast Asia. We’ve provide water to 1000’s of people and helped change their lives.

Thanks for your support, thanks for helping “us” make and exceed plan!

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What was under my Christmas Tree

Numbers Make The Conversation More Interesting

Numbers are the bane of many sales people’s existence. Everyone wants to talk about numbers, but it’s far more fun and easy to talk about our cool products, the flashy features, and all the bells and whistles.

Or in conversations with our managers, it’s easier to talk about all the stuff we are doing, or the stuff the customer isn’t doing, than to talk about the numbers.

But let’s face it, numbers make the conversation more interesting—the right numbers!

Numbers catch the attention of executives and decision makers, so if we aren’t comfortable talking about the numbers, we’re going to struggle with producing results. We may have lots of nice conversations, but we won’t drive the customer to commitment.

Our customers are interested in solving problems, producing results. We measure results in numbers achieved in a specified time period. It may be revenue uplift, expense reduction, improved capital utilization, increased productivity, better cashflow, improved customer retention/acquisition, improved market share, better time to profitability in a product launch, improved throughput, better quality, greater customer satisfaction, better gross margins, greater shareholder value, improved profitability.

We use numbers to assess risk, to forecast outcomes, to project what we might achieve, or to set targets/goals.

Numbers are what make the conversation real, personalized, and specific to the organization and people we are speaking with.

Decisions are made based on numbers—unfortunately, too often the only number we equip our customers with is the price. So they have to figure out all the most important numbers.

Numbers are the great “fix” for the dreaded 57-70% of the buying process the customers are claimed undertake without sales. They can learn a lot about products, solutions, issues. They can even learn about someone else’s numbers. But they can’t learn about their numbers. We make the conversation interesting by helping the customer understand their numbers–both where they are currently, and what they might achieve. They can’t get this from the web, they can’t get this from content, they can only get this when we engage them in conversations about their business.

We tend to focus on our product capabilities, the features and functions, how our offering compares to others. But those primarily address the What and How issues. We need numbers to address the Why issues — fundamentally, why change? (Because our current numbers are unsatisfactory and the future numbers get us to where we need/want to be.).

We tend to push the numbers discussion until late in the sales cycle. Part of this is because we confuse the numbers discussion with the price discussion. Part is that we won’t know the specific numbers–the results and outcomes the customer expects to achieve until the end of the process.

But what would happen if we started having discussions about the numbers in our first or initial discussions with the customer? What if we did enough homework to suggest, “We think you may be missing these opportunities which have this impact on your results?” “We think you can improve the utilization of your manufacturing plants, or the productivity of your sales people, which may produce these results?”

What we’ve done is we’ve moved the “interesting conversations” to the start of the buying/selling process. We may even provoke a customer that hadn’t intended to change, to realize they must change.

Yeah, I know many of you are saying, “But we don’t know enough about them, or what if we are wrong?”

I don’t buy those excuses. There’s too much data available about our customers and their industries. A few of the right questions can elicit enough data to start interesting conversations. There are great tools that help you conduct the conversation.

But the most interesting thing, is you don’t have to be right! You do have to be in the ballpark. If you don’t know the problems you solve or your customers well enough to be in the ball park, then you don’t deserve to be in the meeting.

But if you have that estimate, if you can start the conversation with, “We think there is an opportunity….” it provokes the customer to respond, “How did you arrive at those numbers?” Now you are in an interesting conversation.

It’s a conversation about your assumptions. The assumptions may be off and the customer can help correct those assumptions. Or the customer might says, what about this. Soon the interesting discussion has become a discussion about potential outcomes they might achieve in working with you.

Isn’t that the interesting conversation you want to have with your customers?

Numbers make the conversations more interesting with our managers–but I’ll save that for another post.

My thanks to Jim Berryhill, CEO of Decisionlink, and Martin Schmalenbach for provoking this post. By the way, the single best tool I know of to help you with these first and subsequent conversation is Decisionlink. It was the CEO of one of their large customers that made the observation, “Numbers make the conversation more interesting.

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Tango Predictions

Here is Tom Tango’s prediction for the Hall of Fame vote. This would be an excellent result.

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Thinking About the Schedule

Frank Firke at The Hardball Times thinks outside the box about the MLB schedule and playoff structure. I really like this kind of article, as it tries to incorporate a number of tried (balanced schedule) and untried (relegation) fixes.

One of the strengths attributed to Bud Selig was his ability to get the owners to reach a consensus before making a change. Bud required all the owners to be on board. The downside to that was the solution to scheduling always seemed to be, “Let’s do what the NFL does.”* I doubt Selig ever sat down with the owners and said, “Let’s agree to think outside the box about scheduling, and come up with three proposals.”

Of course, the owners don’t take kindly to change, either. When Selig wanted a realignment, his team, the Brewers, was the only one willing to change leagues. Selig finally got six five-team divisions by holding the sale of the Astros hostage to the move.

Rob Manfred seems to be more open to new ideas, or at least having them discussed in public forums. Personally, I like the idea of shuffling the divisions each year so that it is tougher for teams to repeat, and easier for other second division clubs to make the playoffs. Adding the second wild card appears to have caused more team to think about winning in the current year, rather than throwing in the towel early. A mixing system that put five poor teams in the same division would encourage those teams to build now, since they each would see the possibility of making the playoffs.

*The NFL, however, is much more pro-active in adjusting the game. They tinker with the placement of the hash marks, the yard line for kick offs, the distance of a field goal, when the quarterback is considered sacked, all designed to keep the average score of a game at 42 points.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

New Year for Kazmir

The Dodgers signed Scott Kazmir to a three-year deal.

Scott Kazmir gets $48 million over three years from the Dodgers.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) December 30, 2015

The $48 million total means the Dodgers expect him to be a slightly better than two WAR pitcher, which he accomplished each of the last three years.

I like Kazmir. He went through a very rough patch due to injuries and wildness, but found his way back to effectiveness. He may not be a good a Zack Greinke, but he is a good pitcher who should help the Dodgers at a much lower cost.

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Off the Bench

For the last three years, Jeff Miller of the Orange County Register did not fill out a Hall of Fame ballot. He came off the bench this year and voted for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens:

Well, sometime in the past 12 months, I finally settled on my official stance concerning those who played when the numbers – much like the muscles that produced them – were unnaturally inflated.

I decided I’d vote for the players I believe would have been Hall of Famers had “the cream” and “the clear” never become baseball terms once used as commonly as “the Cubs” and “the Cardinals.”

Sure, this approach requires some imagination and plenty of opinion. But those are two things I typically use in abundance in this position, so why not employ them again now?

In this context, Bonds and Clemens absolutely embody the concept of players whose performances didn’t need enhancement, two of the forever legends who mathematically just became more legendary.

Some form of this argument seems to be the reason writers are coming around to voting for Bonds and Clemens. I don’t think they’ll get in this year, but it’s clear there is a change in the voters this ballot. If Bonds and Clemens do make the jump over 50%, I suspect the momentum will carry them to the Hall sooner than later.

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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Malzone Passes

Former third baseman Frank Malzone died:

A member of the Red Sox hall of fame since 1995, he played in Boston for 11 seasons from 1955-65. He hit 131 homers with 716 RBIs during that stretch, the most of any third baseman in club history. The six-time All-Star finished his career in 1966 with the California Angels.

“We mourn the loss of a man we all came to know as ‘Malzie,’ who was venerated by Red Sox fans not only for his great glove at third base, but for his blue-collar dedication to his craft,” Red Sox chairman Tom Werner said in a statement.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Malzone reached the majors late at seasonal age 25, and did not play a full season until seasonal age 27. He averaged 2.2 WAR over the seven years starting in 1957, a good, solid player. He was a hacker, with a high batting average and low OBP. He neither walked nor struck out much, and would have been a good fit with the Mike Scioscia Angels or the current Royals.

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Heyman for Bonds

Jon Heyman casts his Hall of Fame ballot for Barry Bonds, but not Roger Clemens:

For four years now we Hall of Fame voters have stared at that big name on the ballot, and many of us don’t know what to do. For the first three years he appeared, I stared at it, and stared some more. But I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for the superstar player who turned himself into the greatest player any of us has ever seen, thanks to the aid of mad scientist Victor Conte, loyal trainer Greg Anderson and various chemicals.

But somehow, I always figured I couldn’t say no forever to a player who was an all-time great very likely before he ever touched the bad stuff that would make him a better Babe Ruth, easily the greatest offensive force since baseball integrated. While I never before have voted for a player so inextricably linked to the juice (or linked at all for that matter), I always promised to take every player on the ballot case by case.

In this case, after much deliberation, for the first time I checked “yes” for Bonds. Every player has his own story. And Bonds’ story is compelling, even if it isn’t exactly the story he’s always told.

He also cites the rule change of eligibility from 15 to 10 years as a reason for changing his vote.

This is the third writer from a major news outlet this season who flipped on Bonds (the other two flipped on Clemens as well). These are people with big megaphones, so we will see how many more flip in the future.

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Motivation is Overrated

Discipline vs. Motivation

Out of the thousands of emails that I receive each year, motivation is perhaps the most asked about topic of all. It is rare that a day passes without someone inquiring about how I’ve stayed motivated after so many years. Ironically, I can’t recall the last time anyone asked me about discipline. For some reason, motivation always gets more attention. Everyone wants to be motivated, while few take the time to consider discipline.

That’s a mistake.

Discipline > Motivation

One of the biggest myths of all is that successful people are constantly motivated. The online world that we live in certainly perpetuates this false assumption. Social media only captures what a person wants you to see. As a result, certain people have created the illusion that they operate in a fairy tale land that’s devoid of bad days and bad moods.

The reality though is that no one lives in a constant state of motivation. We all experience ups and downs, and moments when we don’t feel like doing what needs to be done. Successful people don’t just work when they feel like working however. Instead, they are disciplined enough to get the job done regardless of their mood.

If you always wait to feel a certain way before you act, don’t expect to ever accomplish anything worthwhile. Too much time will be spent procrastinating as you sit around waiting for the perfect mood to arrive. Meanwhile, your successful competitors will be busy putting in the work whether they want to or not.

Embrace the Grind

One of the keys to becoming more successful is recognizing the simple fact that life is tough. There is no such thing as a perfect time to work or start a new task. Therefore, rather than constantly seeking out motivation to begin or continue, your time would be better spent cultivating habits that will eventually lead towards enhanced productivity.

Speaking for myself, I have never relied on motivation to succeed. I certainly welcome those times when I’m fired up and ready to go, but I’ll never limit my output to such moments. I’d rather take pride in my work than wait to feel a certain before I work.

Do it Anyway

The other night I was out running hills at a local park. As I finished one of my last sprints, a passerby walked over and jokingly said, “I wish I had your motivation.”

I had just finished sprinting a long hill so I wasn’t about to engage in a conversation. I smiled and waved in appreciation and began jogging back to the bottom of the hill.

While jogging down, I started to think about what the man said. All of a sudden, I found myself shaking my head. I wasn’t feeling motivated at all. It had been a long day, my sleep cycle was off from the holidays, and I surely would have felt better doing something else.

I had already run several sprints but my next one was the fastest of all. I sprinted to the top in hopes of seeing the man. Fortunately, he was already long gone. I probably would have sounded like a lunatic, but I wanted him to know that I wasn’t motivated at all. Motivation isn’t what puts one foot in front of the other. It’s discipline and work ethic that keeps me going.

In other words, just because I don’t feel like doing something doesn’t stop me from doing it anyway.

Final Thoughts

As great as it feels to be motivated, it is important to understand that motivation alone will only take you so far. Whether extrinsic or intrinsic, motivation can come and go in a flash. Discipline however is rooted in consistency. It quietly, yet continuously, chugs along in the background. It becomes part of who you are and what you do.

As an old saying suggests, first you make your habits and then your habits make you. A disciplined person gets up and grinds day after day. They don’t wait for the perfect mood to arrive before beginning. Instead, they cherish the feeling of accomplishment that comes after the fact. That’s where the real joy lies.

In summary, don’t give motivation more credit than it deserves. You don’t need to be motivated to succeed. What you need is the self-discipline to put in the work whether you want to or not. Successful people don’t waste time looking for motivation. They are too busy putting in the work that will eventually allow them to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

+++++

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment” – Jim Rohn

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The Yankees and Character

Mike Axisa makes a number of observations about the Yankees deal for Aroldis Chapman, but this one stings:

I think it’s pretty gross the Yankees essentially used a domestic violence incident to buy low on a player. That’s how I feel. You’re welcome to feel differently. The Dodgers had a deal in place for Chapman earlier this offseason, then backed away when news of the incident got out. (Here’s the story if you haven’t seen it.) The Reds then dropped their asking price — Brian Cashman confirmed it during a conference call yesterday — and the Yankees swooped in. There are a lot of people out there whose lives have been impacted by domestic violence and I think turning a blind eye to it sends a very bad message. Pro sports teams — it’s not just baseball, it happens in every sport — have shown time and time again they will overlook stuff like this as long as the player is good enough. I’d like to think the Yankees hold themselves to higher standards but it’s clear they don’t. It’s one thing for a player to be a jerk and difficult to get along with. Allegations of domestic violence are much more serious. Not a good look, Yankees.

I suppose this is one of the perverse incentives of the suspension system. If MLB decides Chapman should be suspended, the Yankees can argue that he served his time and learned his lesson. They can even point to Alex Rodriguez as an example of the team being wrong about wanting to welcome back a player. If MLB decides not to suspend Chapman, the Yankees are geniuses for taking advantage of the Reds. If there is no system in place, then teams have to deal with the public relations flak with no support from MLB. It’s quite possible in that system, Chapman would be persona non grata. Note that the Boston Red Sox releases Wil Cordero in his prime due to such an issue. His salary suffered for a couple of seasons before he bounced back a bit, but he probably cost himself millions of dollars. If the Red Sox had MLB cover, they might have kept him.

(There are other examples of this. One that comes to mind is the idea that umpires issuing warnings on hit batters leads to more retaliation than letting the teams handle it themselves. The other is the difficulty of suing tobacco companies due to the federal regulation of the industry.)

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Deal Slippage

It’s the end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year…..

I’m looking at the pipelines of several clients (sometimes, I think they regret giving me access to their CRM systems) and I see a flurry of activity. Yes some of it is deals coming in and being closed, but too much of it is slipping the target close date. Move it out a month, a quarter…..

I look at the history of some of the deals, one has moved 11 times in the past 11 months, you guessed it, every month the sales person slips the deal another 30 days. Others are almost as bad. These are all simply wishful thinking. my guess is few of these are real deals, mostly wishful thinking. Shame on the sales people for wasting their and their customer’s time with dreaming about rosy futures. Shame on sales management for letting these stay in the pipeline.

Others are slipping, there seems to be good rationale, after all, we aren’t in control, the customer is. Things happen and deals slip.

Deal slippage frustrates everyone in sales. It’s what makes forecasts inaccurate, it’s what causes us to miss our numbers, it drive uncertainty in everything we do.

We try all sorts of systems to minimize deal slippage, better guessing–maybe through better hedging. We look at analytics to try to help. We even talk to customers and get their input on when they think they might be ready to buy.

But deals still slip.

Perhaps it’s time that we consider an outrageous idea. What if we made the target close date sacred? What if we did everything we possibly could to, first, identify a reasonable close date, then constantly worked to avoid slipping that date?

Deal slippage bothers me, it makes me feel really bad—not because the forecast has been missed, not because of the impact on our numbers. I feel really bad about deal slippage because of the damage it does to our customers.

Every time we miss a target close date means the customer is losing. The problem they are trying to solve, the opportunity they are trying to address remains. The damage, whether lost revenue, rising expenses, bad quality, poor performance persists. It is something lost forever, never to be recovered.

One customer for a client needed to have a manufacturing line in place, producing products by a certain date to meet the Christmas shopping demand. If they missed that date, they would lose $100’s of millions in seasonal sales. Everything in that project was driven by having the manufacturing line in production by a certain date.

Another client’s customers needed to have solutions in place by a certain dates to comply with regulatory changes–otherwise they would have to shut down.

While it’s a little different, once a client was bickering over a few $100 in projected fees for a project. As a result, things slipped—at least until I reminded the client that for every month slip, his company was losing $40M in revenue. As you might guess, we closed the deal and started the project very quickly.

We can make target close dates sacred by making the timing of the results the customer expects to achieve sacred.

We need to start getting the customer to think, “When do you need to start seeing the outcomes you expect?” “When do you need to see results?” “What is the impact to your business if this slips?”

The reason we are engaged with a customer in a buying/selling relationship is to help the customer solve a problem and begin to achieve results. Once the customer agrees this is an important issue, that they can no longer accept the current situation, then we have to get them to declare, “This is when we need to start seeing the improvements we expect!”

This cements the situation in both the customer’s minds and ours. Once we know the date they need to start seeing results, we work backwards from that point?

Once they have a solution in place, how long does it take to produce results? Knowing this, working backwards from the “When do we need to start seeing results,” we can lock in the “go live” date for the solution.

How long does it take to implement the solution to go live? Now we walk backwards from the “go live” date to when we have to start implementation.

What’s the lead time from getting an order to shipping the product or starting to deliver the services we are committing to? Once we know this, we work backwards to the Target Close Date.

The customer is a part of this project planning process. Setting these dates or milestones is all driven by when they need to start seeing results.

If the Target Close Date, the date the customer makes a decision, slips, then everything else slips out as well. The result is the customer has lost something–revenue, profits, missed product launch, missed commitments to their customers……

We can continue the same thinking looking at the customer buying process. Working back from the Target Close Date, we can identify milestones for delivering final proposals, completing the evaluation of alternatives, locking in needs/requirement.

Many of you will recognize this as classic project planning. Setting goals, establishing milestones, identifying critical activities. All done by working backwards from the goal.

Project planners know things slip. Some tasks take longer than expected, some delays occur, some commitments are missed. Great project planners keep adjusting their plans and milestones–still keeping the project goal/end date sacred. They do everything possible to hit that date, because they know if they miss the date, it will cause the company to miss a critical opportunity. Yes, sometimes the target completion date slips, but great project planners do everything possible to minimize this.

Target Close Dates can be sacred. We can minimize deal slippage. The basis of this can’t be when we want to see the deal closed or our best guess of when we think the customer will make a decision.

It all starts by getting the customer to answer the question, “When do you need to start seeing results?”

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Zero Clancy

South Side Sox tells the story of Bud Clancy, the first baseman who recorded the earliest no-putout game at the position.

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Monday, December 28, 2015

Chapman to the Yankees

Here is a rumor to make your day, Aroldis Chapman to the Yankees:

Source: Yankees are on the verge of acquiring Aroldis Chapman from the Reds.

— Jack Curry (@JackCurryYES) December 28, 2015

I guess the Yankees don’t mind dealing with PR problems.

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Meadowlark Passes

Meadowlark Lemon died Sunday. One of my favorite television specials growing up was the yearly broadcast of a Harlem Globetrotters game. Lemon was the star and a magician with the ball.

He chased referees with a bucket and surprised them with a shower of confetti instead of water. He dribbled above his head and walked with exaggerated steps. He mimicked a hitter in the batter’s box and, with teammates, pantomimed a baseball game.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

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New Streaming Option

It looks like MLB.TV will offer a single team streaming package in 2016 for out-of-market teams:

It’s not immediately clear if this means that fans will be able to purchase a season-long subscription giving them access to all of a single team’s games, or if MLB will instead be reintroducing a single-game purchase option for fans (MLB.TV allowed you to purchase single game plans when the service originally debuted more than a decade ago). However, considering that both the NBA and NHL have recently created season-long, single-team streaming packages for their fans, it would seem likely that MLB intends to do the same in 2016.

We are inching are way ever closer to being able to watch whatever games we want wherever we are via streaming video.

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Rosenthal Turns

Ken Rosenthal joins the group of writers voting for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on the Hall of Fame ballot:

I consistently have voted for Piazza, believing that suspicion alone is not enough to withhold a vote from a player who has never admitted to PED use, never tested positive to public knowledge, never been the subject of a government investigation. I also have voted for Jeff Bagwell, a player who has faced similar questions.

But once one of those players is elected, how could I be truly confident that they were different than Bonds and Clemens, and other recent inductees were as well?

I could not.

And for me, this is where the hair-splitting ends.

In addition to Bonds, Clemens, Piazza and Bagwell, I voted for Ken Griffey Jr., Trevor Hoffman, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Tim Raines and Curt Schilling. I did not vote for Mark McGwire, a confirmed user, and Sammy Sosa, an alleged one. But every year I reconsider. This is McGwire’s 10th and final chance on the ballot. Maybe I will vote for Sosa in the future, maybe not.

McGwire is not going to outlast the outrage, probably because of the reduction in times on the ballot from 15 years to ten years. Bonds and Clemens may make it.

The Hall of Fame tracker has Bonds and Clemens at about 50% without Rosenthal’s ballot included. Piazza, Bagwell, and Raines are doing very well. The may be the year the damn breaks.

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The Purpose Of Selling Is To ………

Complete the sentence, “The purpose of selling is to…….”

When I ask sales people and managers that question, the responses vary but generally fit into one of the categories below:

…… to make my/our numbers.

…… to sell our company’s solutions and products.

….. to achieve our revenue and growth goals.

….. to grow our company.

Those are all outcomes of being successful in selling, but what’s absent in each of those perspectives?

It’s pretty easy to recognize, it’s the customer. All the responses are very self-centered, focused on what we want to achieve.

We take it for granted, but without a customer, we can’t sell. Until a customer buys, we can never achieve any of the outcomes outlined above.

Turn the question around, put yourself in a customer’s shoes, finish the sentence, “The purpose of buying is to ……”

….. help us address and solve a problem.

….. help us address opportunities we’ve not been able to address in the past.

….. help us become more efficient and reduce operational expense.

…..help us better serve our customers and address their needs/requirements.

…..help us improve our quality.

Our customers are buying, not just to buy but to achieve something.

At this point, I’m probably eliciting a yawn, or a reaction something like, “What’s the point, Dave?”

The point is not earthshaking, but it’s really about the disconnect in perspectives, purpose, and objectives between sellers and buyers. Until we resolve this disconnect, we sales people will always struggle to achieve our goals. We need to be completing the sentence, The purpose of selling is to help our customers address and solve problems. The purpose of selling is to help our customers address opportunities they’ve not been able to address in the past. You can figure out the rest.

Selling requires buying (Duugghhhh). But if our focus is on what we achieve, then we have lost that vital partner that enables us to achieve our goals–so we can never reach them.

As simplistic as this seems, it transforms the relationship we have with customers, It transforms who we engage, how we engage, and what we achieve though them.

First, it forces us to focus on customers who have problems we can solve. Spending time with anyone else is a waste of both their and our time.

Second, it forces us to focus on customers who have a recognized need to change and do something. If they don’t have a compelling need to change, they have no reason to buy. Often our role is to create and get them to recognize that compelling need to change. We may do that through providing insight, talking about what others in the industry are doing, helping them understand and recognize they must address certain issues to achieve their goals.

We make selling far too difficult buy focusing only on selling. Frankly, I’m too lazy to do that—it’s too much work. It’s so much easier if we recognize the buyer, helping them achieve what they want to do.

Take a moment, reflect on your immediate response to the challenge to complete the sentence, “The purpose of selling is to…..”

If your response didn’t have the words, “help my customer….” then you will always struggle to achieve your goals.

Figure out what you need to do to embrace the customer and what they want to achieve. Things get much easier.

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Sunday, December 27, 2015

Dave Henderson Passes

More sad news as Dave Henderson died of a heart attack on Sunday. He hit a home run for the Red Sox against the Angels in the 1986 that ranks as one of the most memorable in playoff history:

But beyond his memorable playoff moment, Henderson was a reliable contributor to four teams that reached the World Series and played 14 seasons total in the majors. His greatest success came from 1988-91 with Oakland. During that four-year stretch, the A’s went to the World Series three times.

My thought go out to his family and friends. At 57 years old, he left us much too early.

Henderson peaked late, with 20.6 of his 27.6 rWAR coming in four years from ages 29-32, all with Oakland. Overall, he got on base at an all-right clip, but hit for decent power. Baseball-Reference has his with some good defensive seasons, especially during those four peak years.

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O’Toole Passes

Jim O’Toole died on Saturday at the age of 78:

The lefty started the opening game of the 1961 World Series, losing to Yankees ace Whitey Ford 2-0. He also lost Game 4 to Ford, as a New York team featuring Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra won the series in five games. O’Toole gave up four earned runs over 12 innings.

He was the National League’s starting pitcher in the 1963 All-Star Game. O’Toole called that one of his proudest career moments, recalling that manager Alvin Dark chose him to start with a roster that included future Hall of Fame pitchers Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends. It was nice he got to spend Christmas with them.

O’Toole came up young, becoming part of the Reds rotation by age 22. He peaked early, going 81-55, a .596 winning percentage from age 23 to age 27. In that time his strength came from low walk and home run rates, and his 5.9 K per 9 was not shabby for the era. He was finished after his age 30 season in 1967, I suspect due to injuries that they might have treated today.

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New Scandal

Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman are involved in a new PED scandal:

An Indianapolis anti-aging clinic supplied quarterback Peyton Manning with human growth hormone, a performance-enhancing drug banned by the NFL, a pharmacist who once worked at the clinic asserts in a new special report from Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.

The report, “The Dark Side,” is the result of a months long investigation in which Liam Collins, a British hurdler, went undercover in an attempt to expose the widespread nature of performance-enhancing drugs in global sports. As a cover story, Collins tells medical professionals tied to the trade of performance-enhancing drugs that he is hoping for one last shot at glory at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Manning is just one of many high-profile players the report names and raises questions about.

Taylor Teagarden is actually on camera discussing his drug use. The entire 49 minute report is online at the link.

The first thing that comes to mind is if they Ryans are using the drugs, they aren’t working very well.

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Strauss Passes

Former baseball writer Joe Strauss died early Sunday morning. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

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Saturday, December 26, 2015

Brambleten Paints... ArcWorlde's Father Griffmas - Part 3

Merry Christmas and welcome to Part 3 of Brambleten Paints... Father Griffmas! With Christmas Day passed and the Eavier Metal comp deadline nearing (30th Dec), it's time to get a shift on!

Here he is, as he was at the end of Part 2:

So, pretty much a load of stuff left to do on him. To start off, I decided to work on his base rather than him.

I started off with the same brown as I used on his sack and weapon, P3 Umbral Umber, then added a liberal soaking of Devlan Mud.

I then added a few layers of Umbral Umber and mixed in some GW Tausept Ochre.

At this point, it's mostly done, just requiring one or two finishing touches, such as the base rim to be edged black and some more Devlan Mud on the loose dirt to give it more definition.

Back to ol' Griff himself. At the same time as I drowned the base in Devlan Mud, I washed all the bone and cream parts of the main guy, along with his bag.

With the base, midway through the basing stages above.

Deck Tan was added to rehighlight the cream areas.

The last miniature I finished was Bonnie from Another World and the main colour on her was her red dress. Once she was finished, I found that I could have added a lot more depth to it, so with Griff being largely red himself, I set out to not repeat my mistakes.

Onto my palette went the main shade - P3 Sanguine Base, P3 Umbral Umber and S75 Sunset Purple for shading and Khorne Red, Mephiston Red and Evil Suns Scarlet for the highlighting.

I'm working on the light coming from above him to his right, so from the base of his axe diagonally down.

I think a little more depth is needed, but it's hard to tell when not all the colours I want on the mini are on there at the moment. The next job was to start on his sack, so some Tausept Ochre was added to Umbral Umber.

This will probably be the last WIP post about Griffmas, thanks to his deadline being 30th Dec. The next time you see him, he should be completed!

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AA Stadium Problems

The Rockies AA team plays in my backyard, so to speak. They are moving out of New Britain to downtown Hartford, and the stadium looks like it won’t be ready for opening day:

While the city and developers continue to fight about the budget, though, the concern for the Yard Goats remains on April: there’s a legitimate chance the stadium will not be ready in time for Opening Day. While the ball club is keeping the Eastern League and the Rockies’ front office in Denver informed, the Courant reports there is no contingency plan in place should the stadium not be ready.

This is just another point on the graph of why cities should not build stadiums, especially rather poor cities like Hartford. I have been traveling past the construction site for months, and only recently recognized the construction as a stadium. The steel skeleton is up, but not much else.

Also, while the move should cut travel time for me to games from 40 to 20 minutes, traffic at the I-91 and I-84 interchange is horrible during rush hour. Adding a stadium with (as far as I can tell) no road improvements means it may actually take longer for me to arrive!

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The Tide is Turning

Jerry Crasnick votes for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on his Hall of Fame ballot.

Even without their turbo-charged ascents into statistical fantasyland, you can make the case Bonds and Clemens were Hall of Famers if they had only quit while they were ahead. In 1998, at age 33, Bonds was a three-time MVP who ranked 34th on The Sporting News’ list of 100 greatest players. He had already accumulated a Wins Above Replacement of 94.6 — more than Al Kaline, Joe DiMaggio, Reggie Jackson and several other outfield greats amassed in their entire careers.

Although I read the whole piece, this is the best reason Crasnick gives for changing his vote, but it’s not clear to me why he did so. I suspect he has just two many doubts about the writers infallibility to keep this two out of the Hall. Public ballots so far have Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, and Jeff Bagwell making the Hall this year. So maybe the slightly tainted get in this year, and the more tainted get in next year?

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