“Are You Happy With Your Current…….”

Why do so many prospecting calls start with the questions, “Are you happy with…….?”  Substitute whatever solution category you sell.  It could be any variety of sales and marketing automation tools, your banking relationships, your website, your janitorial services.

My answer is always, “I’m ecstatic with it!”  After all, if I wasn’t happy and it was something important to me, I’d be doing something about it.

But a huge number of prospecting calls start with this question.  Inevitably, when I proclaim how satisfied I am, the sales person goes silent.  The majority are stumped.

They struggle with a few other questions about whether I’m happy or not, but the call comes to an uncomfortable silent point.  They are searching for unhappiness and don’t know what to do when they don’t discover it.

The call finally becomes one of uncomfortable silence, I’m waiting for them to catch my attention, but they don’t know what to say because they have only prepared to deal with those that express unhappiness.

Inevitably, you hear a disappointed, perhaps confused or stumped voice, timidly saying “Thank you,” then hanging up.

But what a huge lost opportunity!

Let’s start breaking this down:

1. First, “Are you happy….”  is a close ended question.  We never get people engaged and talking about themselves and their businesses by asking an opening question that has only two responses—Yes or No!  Our purpose in prospecting calls is to engage the prospect, learn, identify opportunities of shared interest.  This happens through insights that provoke a, “I’d like to learn more” response or open ended questions about things we know should be important to the prospect.
2. The people responding in the affirmative, are probably doing something about their unhappiness–at least if it’s a priority.  They may be well into a buying cycle, and if they haven’t already discovered you (in which case you wouldn’t be making the call in the first place), they probably have a number of alternatives they are already considering.  Inevitably, you have to mount a huge, “come from behind” effort to get into consideration.
3. The “Are you unhappy” question is always about a product, solution, or vendor—at least 99% of those I get.  From this very first sentence, we are starting the conversation in the wrong place.  We are making their unhappiness all about what we sell and the alternatives.  It’s simply a variant of the product pitch.  We already know customers don’t care about us, they don’t care about our products, they don’t express their unhappiness in terms of what we sell.  Customers’ happiness or unhappiness is always expressed in terms of their ability to achieve their business and personal goals.  They are expressed in terms of problems they are having in doing those things, opportunities they would like to seize but, for various reasons, can’t.
4. If we are going to ask the unhappiness question, it can’t be around a solution or implementation, but about themselves and their business.
5. We have to be prepared to deal with the “happy,” or “not unhappy” response.  It is human nature to resist change, after all, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  Just because they are “happy,” or “not unhappy,” doesn’t mean they shouldn’t change.  If we can’t engage the customer in a discussion of what they want to do, but can’t; what they could do, but were unaware of; what they dream of doing, but don’t know how; what they must do, but were unaware of the threat; then we miss huge opportunities to serve them, to create value, to grow our relationship, and to sell!
6. At the risk of being redundant and crass, being “happy” is an objection.  Objections are always opportunities for us to learn.  And in that learning, we and the customer may discover opportunities in which we can engage them.  In the very least we can understand why they are happy with what they are doing, who their supplier is, and perhaps ask if there is anything on their “wish list” for doing things new.  While the prospect may not be unhappy with the way they are doing things now, or their current solution or vendor, there may be things they are missing and are simply unaware of.

The “Are you happy with your current…” question is dull, lazy, and a waste of everyone’s time.  If you want to engage your prospects, if you want to increase your hit rate on prospecting calls, do the work to understand what might captivate your prospects’ imaginations and start there.

Wrapping this rant up, perhaps the only remaining question is, “Are you happy with this post….”  (Sorry couldn’t resist.)

Related Posts:

• Rethinking Qualifying—Is This Good Business For Us?
• When The Script Works
• If You Were In Your Customer’s Shoes, What Would You…
• On Being Present And Engaged
• What Do I Talk To Them About?

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Five More Years

The new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) appears to be in place:

Major League Baseball’s players and owners have agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement, sources tell MLB.com’s Richard Justice. The new agreement calls for a five-year deal, according to multiple reports. Neither side has confirmed a new agreement is formally in place, but representatives from both camps emerged visibly pleased and shook hands in public view nearly four hours before Wednesday night’s deadline.

Players and owners had until 11:59 p.m. ET to reach a deal. After that, both sides would have had to agree to an extension or the owners could have imposed a lockout.

The structure of the deal is in place with details to be finalized. A memorandum of understanding will be drafted, which then must be ratified by both sides.

Good news and not surprising. The acrimony that existed during the first three decades of the union have greatly dissipated over the years as the owners who knew and loved the reserve clause died off. We’ll wait for the details, but baseball will go on uninterrupted for another five years.

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Don’t Confuse Leadership With Titles, Everyone Leads!

Too often, we look at a person’s title, CEO, EVP, SVP, C-Level something or other, Vice President, Director, Manager; confusing the title with leadership.

In the best of all worlds people in executive or managerial roles would be great leaders.  In reality, that’s not always true, sometimes in my most pessimistic moments, rarely true.

We tend to mix the concepts of “manager” and “leader,” where they represent distinctly different behaviors, attitudes, and competencies.

Jim Collins defines leadership characteristics of Level 5 leaders as including:  Humility, will, ferocious resolve, the tendency to give others credit while assigning blame to themselves.

Other words that describe various leadership characteristics include empathy, caring about their people, high integrity, trustworthy, visionary, patience, transparent, focus, confident, passionate, authentic, curious, decisive, honest, consistency, great communicators, visionary, driven, ethical, inspiring, persistent, constant learners, goal driven, risk takers/managers, purposeful, are great role models.  The list goes on–in reality, leadership means something different to everyone, which may possibly be part of the challenge we have in making sure our organizations have great leaders.

Likewise, the responsibilities of managers may include things other than being great leaders (in fact many managerial job descriptions I read don’t include leadership in the description.)

However, when we see individuals in positions of responsibility, those having teams of people reporting to them, we have an expectation they are leaders-when they may not be.

But here’s the real opportunity.  Leadership isn’t restricted to those with leadership and management titles.

Leadership can be exercised by anyone–even if they are not responsible for managing anyone but themselves.

Leadership is particularly important for sales people.  Those qualities we identify for great leaders are the very same qualities of great sales people. To be effective in working with our customers, to gain the support we need from people within our own companies, to help our colleagues and peers so they, in turn, help us; we have to exercise leadership.

Perhaps, I’m a little naive, but I believe great leadership is infectious.  We recognize and are inspired by great leadership.  We start to model our behaviors through the examples they set and the behaviors they display.  In turn, we influence others.

Leaders also gravitate to each other, they recognize success can’t be achieved alone, so they actively culture relationships with other leaders to amplify their impact and drive for shared success.  Finding great leaders in our customers, whatever their title, is critical for what we as sales leaders are trying to achieve for/with our customers.  Finding great leaders in our own organizations, whatever their title, enables us to drive higher levels of performance and accomplishment for everyone in the organization.

Great leaders aren’t passive, waiting to be led, instead they lead, they inspire, they motivate–everyone around them including those with greater titles.

Are you taking your opportunities to lead?

Related Posts:

• 5 Skills To Turn Sales Managers Into Sales Leaders
• Business Focused, But People Centric
• Are We Building Our Sales People’s Leadership…
• Leadership and Narcissism
• Inspirational Leadership: The Victim of the Balanced…

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Draft Dropped

It appears Major League Baseball abandoned the idea for an international draft in the current labor negotiations. Good. There is no indication the players gave up anything to keep the draft out of the CBA.

The luxury tax is now the main point of negotiation, according the story. That’s just money, however, and since baseball is awash in money, that should be relatively easy to resolve.

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Gardner and the Giants

Harrison Howard suggests the Giants trade for the Yankees Brett Gardner:

Gardner’s contract has him with a ball club through 2018, with a team option for 2019. If not this season, but next season the Yankees will need Gardner off the roster. They are rebuilding and don’t need a 33-year-old taking playing time away from their top outfield prospects. This off-season makes the most sense to move him. His trade value won’t be higher than it is right now. The Giants need to take advantage of this and acquire Gardner before another team jumps on him.

Interestingly, the article feels that Gardner would improve the Giants with his glove more than his bat. Unfortunately, the last three seasons FanGraphs rates him as a negative outfielder. The Giants defense was fine in 2016 in LF.

Gardner’s biggest plus would be his OBP, but the trade would give them an old outfield with Denard Span and Hunter Pence. Defense is a young man’s game, so while they may generate some runs, some balls will fall in for hits.

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Cespedes Signs

Yoenis Cespedes unofficially agreed to a deal with the Mets:

A person familiar with the negotiations tells The Associated Press that outfielder Yoenis Cespedes and the New York Mets have agreed to a $110 million, four-year contract.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Tuesday because the agreement is subject to Cespedes successfully completing a physical.

The 31-year-old Cespedes gets a full no-trade provision as part of the agreement. The deal’s $27.5 million average annual value ties former Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez for the second-highest among position players, trailing only Miguel Cabrera’s $29.2 million with Detroit.

I really like this contract. Cespedes averaged 4.4 WAR per year over the last three seasons. If you figure a 10% fall-off per season (since he is over 30), he would generate 13.6 WAR over the life of the contract, which at $8 million per WAR comes out to $110 million. Cespedes went for a very high average value instead of a long-term contract. If he plays well over the next four seasons, he can cash in at an even higher rate for his remaining WAR, and in the mean-time gets to be among the highest paid players in the game on an annual basis.

In general, I think players would do better in the long run if they did shorter contracts with a higher average value. It works for the clubs, too, as they are not paying a player too much after his production drops. I hope to see more of this kind of deal.

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Trade Strategy

U.S.S. Mariner provides an interesting take on Jerry DiPoto’s trade strategy:

Jerry Dipoto and the M’s came to view a player who’d played his way to a lower ceiling as having more value in trade – even without a mint-conditioned prospect sheen – than they do on the M’s roster.

The post shows how that explains the moves made so far this off-season by the M’s. Rather than waste time developing disappointing prospects, the M’s move them to another team who believe those prospects still have upside.

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Why Don’t We Take The Time To Do Things Right?

It’s oddly ironic, we never seem to take the time to do things right.

• We don’t do the pre-call research before the call or meeting.  We know we have the greatest impact when we have some minimal amount of research complete, but somehow, we don’t take the time.
• We don’t take the time to personalize our emails.  We know we will have far higher open rates and far better receptivity with even the most simple levels of targeting and personalization, yet we don’t take the time to do it.
• We don’t leverage the sales process.  We know the sales process represents the most effective and efficient steps to engage customers and navigate their buying process.
• We don’t develop call or deal plans/strategies.  Like the research, we know these things increase our impact, increase the value we create, and maximize our abilities to win.
• We don’t focus on the customers’ goals, challenges, problems, instead pitch our products hoping the customer can make the connections to how it helps them, rather than providing this leadership ourselves.
• As managers, we don’t develop a rich hiring profile supported by a competency model.  We know this is critical to getting people with the attitudes, behaviors, skills, competencies, experiences to be successful, but we don’t take the time to do this.  Instead, we risk hiring the wrong people.
• We don’t have strong onboarding programs to reduce time to productivity.  We know without this, the liklihood of a sales person being productive in the shortest possible time is very low.  The liklihood they will fail is increased.
• We don’t take the time to coach our people.  We know coaching is critical to maximizing performance, but we don’t take the time to coach, then wonder why our teams aren’t making their goals.

I could go on and on, but you get the point or you are getting really pissed off.

As sales people or managers, unless we are totally unconscious, we know the things we should be doing to produce the best results.  But too often we fail to do them, most often complaining that we don’t have the time to do these things we know to produce results.

Instead of taking the time to do the things we know are right, we take shortcuts.  Inevitably the shortcuts don’t produce the same results as doing things right.   Then, we take more time to correct things.  But since we aren’t doing the right things, we tend to continue to fix problems that probably wouldn’t have occurred if we did what we knew was right in the first place.

The irony, is we always find the time to correct our mistakes and missteps, but we can never find the time to do things right in the first place.

How much time would we free up?  How much more effective would we be?  What would happen if we started doing the things we know to be right?

 

Related Posts:

• Taking Shortcuts
• Shortcuts
• Are You Obsessing Over Your Front Line Managers?
• Why Do Sales Managers Exist?
• Is Sales Coaching Dead?

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4 Tips to Prepare Your Bathroom for Winter Months

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

Winter is on the horizon. If you haven’t prepared your bathrooms for cold weather, now is the time. Here are some tips to help you prepare your bathroom for the upcoming winter months, including: checking windows and pipes, adding some heating, setting the mood & winterizing your toilet.

Image Source: Flickr

Below are 4 tips to prepare your bathroom for the winter months:

Check Windows and Pipes

Bathrooms can be draughty places, so it’s a good idea to check your windows for cracks and reseal any worn silicone. It might also be a good idea to check your pipes for cracks and leaks, as well as ensuring all your pipework is properly insulated. By ensuring there are no problems in your bathroom to begin with, you can avoid small problems getting bigger down the track, which can often happen in winter with frozen pipes causing expensive issues. Source: BathroomCity

Add Some Heating
Is there anything more unpleasant than having to make a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night, only to discover that the entire room is freezing cold?  You can avoid this unpleasant scenario – to a point, anyway – by adding a heating element to your bathroom during the winter months. If your bathroom doesn’t already have its own heat source, add a space heater or other portable heating device that can be switched on to heat up at least part of the room as quickly as possible. Source: AmericanBathInd

Set the mood
Speaking of simple swaps, trading out bathroom accessories to fit the season is a great way to change the look of the bath. Display cozy, plush robes to keep bathers warm when stepping out of the shower and make guests feel right at home. Consider installing robe hooks close to the shower door for easy access. For added flair, incorporate accessories such as towels in a festive pattern, splashes of gold in soap dishes, or hints of bronze in candle holders and picture frames. Source: WaynecoJournalBanner

Winterize Your Toilet
You may be unaware that you can winterize your toilet and prevent this fixture from freezing during cold weather. In fact winterizing the toilet is quite easy and does not take much time at all to complete. This process involves using plumber’s antifreeze, which you can buy at most home improvement or hardware stores.
Before you pour in the antifreeze, you should first empty the water out of the back tank. Once the water is drained, you can then pour in the antifreeze and then flush it into the bowl and drainage system. After you flush, you should then pour a half cup of plumber’s antifreeze into each sink, shower, and tub in your house. This step winterizes the entire drainage system in your bathroom. Source: KitchenCabinetKings

Contact:
Perfect Bath
Phone: Toll Free 1-866-843-1641
Calgary, Alberta
Email: info@perfectbath.com

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Returning to Scioscia’s Roots

Nicolas Stellini notes a positive note for the Angels in 2016, their batters struck out very little:

Los Angeles finished in the bottom half of baseball in terms of scoring runs, yes — and fared even more poorly by that measure after accounting for park and league — but they also managed to record the majors’ lowest strikeout rate as a team. If you had to guess which team was the best at not striking out, the Angels would probably be something like your 12th guess. Outside of Trout, the team has been so bland on offense that you can’t really think of anything interesting they do. I’m glad we have this chance to talk about something that the Angels did besides providing Tim Lincecum with the chance to throw batting practice.

The Angels struck out in 19.2% of their plate appearances in 2015, which put them in the upper third of the league in terms of avoiding punchouts. That mark was at 20.1% in 2014, and they brought it all the way down to 16.4% this year. That’s pretty darn good.

Back in 2002, the year the Angels won the World Series, they struck out and walked very little. The Angels went up against a poor defensive team, the Yankees, in the ALDS. That year, the Yankees pitchers struck out the second most batters in the AL, which helped cover up their poor defense. The Angels only struck out 18 times in four games that series, and balls kept finding holes. I’m not surprised that with a weak offense, a Mike Scioscia team is doing it’s best to put the ball in play.

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Organizations Are Reflections Of Leaders’ Priorities

I have lots of different conversations with sales executives.  They cover any number of issues:

“Dave, how do I get our people to use the sales process?”

“My people aren’t using the tools we provide them….”

“We need to be more customer focused….”

“We need to create and communicate our value more effectively…..”

“We need people to be more proactive in their territories….”

The list goes on.  All of them are about executives trying to drive change in the way their organizations and people work.  They struggle with making these things happen.

At some point in these conversations, I usually begin asking questions about the executives’ own priorities and behaviors.  For example, “How do you leverage your sales process in your discussions with your people?” or “How are you using your tools to improve your own productivity?”

As you might expect, I get a lot of quizzical looks and questions, “What do you mean?  These are things my people need to do, why are you asking about me?”

The reality is the behaviors of our organizations mirror the behaviors and priorities of the leaders.

If we want our people to use the sales process, then every time we do deal or pipeline reviews, we have to conduct these leveraging the sales process.  If we want our people to focus more on the customer businesses, challenges, and problems, then we have to stop focusing on asking our people about the transactions.  We have to start asking them about the customers and their priorities, as well as what we are doing to address those priorities.

The questions we ask, the things we discuss in meetings, the behaviors we display are all indicators of our priorities and expectations.  Our people pay attention to these, and naturally tend to respond or behave in ways that are consistent with what they see us doing.

A number of years ago, I worked with a CEO of a very large organization.  It’s performance was deteriorating rapidly.  He was a huge multi-tasker, thinking it enabled him to accomplish much more.  For example, he would schedule multiple meetings concurrently, moving from meeting to meeting.  In those meetings he would constantly be on his smartphone, texting or doing emails.

When he asked me, “Why don’t we seem to be getting things done,” I took him to his computer and had him look at his calendar.  He looked at it, shrugged saying, “So what, I’m very productive that way.”  I then had him look at the calendars of his direct reports, all of them had taken to scheduling multiple meetings simultaneously.  In the meetings he attended with them, he saw they were listening with one ear, preoccupied with texting, emails.

We looked several levels down in the organization seeing the same behaviors.

Everyone was emulating his bad habits of multi-tasking, as a results there was lots of activity, but nothing was being accomplished.

He asked me what to do about it.  The solution was simple:  Schedule one meeting at a time; stop texting and emailing in the meeting.  I added, that he should make sure each meeting had a pre-published agenda.

He struggled with the idea a little, asking, “Which should I cancel?”  I told him it didn’t matter.  Over time, the most important meetings would bubble to the surface.

Within a month, we saw a huge change in the organization.  Simply by changing his own habits, everyone else changed.  We started to see more things being accomplished.  While they still had a long way to go, a huge part of the problem was the organization was mirroring the CEOs behaviors and spreading the dysfunction throughout the organization.  But when he started demonstrating the right behaviors, things started changing quickly.

If we want to drive change in our organizations, the first thing we have to do is change ourselves.  Everything we do from our attitudes and behaviors, our priorities, the questions we ask, the things we put on or take off our agendas are critical to driving change.

Our people’s actions, priorities, behaviors will constantly be a reflection of our own.  If what we do is inconsistent with what we want them to do, then we will fail.

Related Posts:

• Leading By Example
• Sales Manager: Stop Wasting Your Time On Coaching Meetings!
• Performance Management Starts With Looking In The Mirror
• Little Things Add Up
• Appointments With Sales People Fall Short Of Executive…

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More on the Cy Young Debate

Sabermetric Research looks at the defensive debate swirling around Justin Verlander and Rick Porcello. Phil Birnbaum uses a Monte Carlo approach to show how luck could result in Verlander getting better than Tigers average defense on the days he pitched, and uses a run support analogy.

All well and good, except pitchers have little to do with run support in the AL, and they have quite a lot to do with defense. What I want to see, and haven’t so far, are how difficult or easy balls in play were against Porcello and Verlander compared to other pitchers on the team. So if the expected BABIP against Verlander was .240, then his .255 number doesn’t look so good. Somebody has those numbers.

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Head to Head Voting

Tom Tango is rating players on the Hall of Fame ballot by head-to-head comparison. Voting is fun, and the results so far make some sense, although not my precise order. The more votes, the better the results!

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Too Much Debt

The Dodgers are carrying too much debt, according to MLB rules:

The rule, designed to ensure teams have the resources to meet their financial obligations, generally limits debt to no more than 12 times annual revenue, minus expenses. The Dodgers were not profitable in any of the first three full seasons under new ownership, co-owner Todd Boehly said last year. Their debt is believed to be in the hundreds of millions.

Guggenheim’s spending — from the assumption of a quarter-billion in contracts to get Adrian Gonzalez in 2012 to the sport’s first $300-million payroll in 2015 — raised eyebrows throughout the industry. The New York Yankees led the major leagues in payroll every season from 1999-2012, but the Dodgers have led in every full season under Guggenheim ownership.

“The Dodgers blew past the Yankees like Grant through Richmond,” said Ron Fowler, executive chairman of the San Diego Padres.

Manfred said the Dodgers’ five-year waiver from the debt service requirements was authorized by the collective bargaining agreement in place at the time of the sale.

Debt is an interesting animal. The ability to service debt depends on lots of factors, including the value of the property financed, the interest rate, the credit worthiness of the debtor, and the liquidity of the lender. Is the interest rate fixed or variable? Can the loans be called?

I suspect that with the value of the Dodgers being in the billions and the debt in hundred of millions, Guggenheim can service it just fine. This rule is more about preserving competitive balance than worrying about the financial health of the Dodgers.

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Friends, Roman, Phillies

Tal Venada suggests that Howie Kendrick would be a good stop-gap in the outfield if he bounces back a bit from his 2016 campaign. The projections at FanGraphs make that appear likely. The Phillies need to improve two outfield positions, however, and maybe Roman Quinn is the answer to the other slot. His development was slowed by injuries, but hit .295/.359/.438 in 579 AA plate appearances. He will play 2017 as a 24-year-old, which means the Phillies will control his prime cost effectively. He did a great job getting on base in his brief time in the majors. An outfield with Kendrick and Quinn on either side of Odubel Herrera should be much more productive, and help move the team out of the bottom slot in runs scored.

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Synchro Vancouver in Mount Pleasant

Synchro by Bold is a gorgeous 5 storey mid-rise building coming to the up and coming Mount Pleasant area. This exciting new development will consist of 13 1-bedroom suites ranging from 532 – 653 sq ft and 16 2-bedroom suites ranging from 724-1062 sq ft.

Within walking distance of Synchro you will find lovely Brew pubs, Cafes, Boutique shops and great restaurants. Experience the convenience of Mount Pleasant and the surrounding areas such as Olympic Village and False Creek.

Pricing has not yet been determined.  Please register and join our VIP list to be one of the first to receive information.

 

The post Synchro Vancouver in Mount Pleasant appeared first on Vancouver New Condos.

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More Orruks!

I've been a bit off my painting in the last couple of weeks but let's check out some more Orruks!


 
This unit took much longer to finish than I had thought it might, partly because real life has been getting in the way pretty heavily in the last few weeks. Which is a shame because in general i'm pretty motivated to paint.

One other disapointing thing which happened, was Horus Heresy weekender tickets sold out in a flash, that had been a painting competition I'd been hoping to get to but sadly it seems not to be.

Anyway on with the Orruks!

  

Nothing too special here, I just took what I'd done on the single model and extended it to the unit. However because it took much longer than I had thought it would, i'm not super excited to paint any more orks just yet anyway.

Not really sure what I'll do with these guys. I've recently got hold of the silver tower box, which I'm hoping to play a bit, so getting stuck into that is likely my next project.

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Thornley & Ratch pt 1

Holiday Deal

The Diamondbacks and Mariners accomplished a significant five-player trade:

Mike Hazen aimed high in his first trade as Diamondbacks’ general manager, landing a starting pitcher with potentially sizable upside on Wednesday night when he acquired right-hander Taijuan Walker in a five-player deal that sent infielder Jean Segura to the Seattle Mariners.

“It’s not one of those guys that you’re able to acquire all the time with the state of the game now with pitching and the premium, especially on starting pitching,” Hazen said on a conference call to announce the deal. “We felt like this was an opportunity we needed to take at this moment in time.”

In addition to Walker, the Diamondbacks also acquired infielder Ketel Marte while sending outfielder Mitch Haniger and left-handed reliever Zac Curtis to the Mariners.

Walker does not live up to his name, with his strength as a pitcher his walk rate, 2.5 per nine innings pitched. He’ll play 2017 as a 24-year-old, so he has yet to reach his peak. His strikeout rate is fine but not spectacular, but he does allow home runs. Note that he allowed more power in Seattle, a park not known for it’s home runs. I would think that weakness would hurt him in Arizona.

Segura gives the Mariners a middle infielder who gets on base and usually plays good defense. Marte is only 23, and had a rough second year at the plate. He hurt his thumb, which can be a huge factor in a batter’s production. I suspect the Mariners wanted to win now, and they decided they could not wait to see if Marte’s bat recovered.

Haniger is an outfielder with a great minor league OBP, but he’s old, playing at seasonal age 26 in 2017. That means if he’s going to produce at the major league level, it’s now or never. Curtis is a high strikeout lefty who showed good control in the minors, but not so far in the majors.

I’m tempted to say the Mariners did a lot better in this deal, in that all three players they acquired should be able to help them win now. The Diamondbacks will come out of this well if the two players they acquired reach their upside potential.

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Happy Thanksgiving

On this Thanksgiving I want to send my appreciation out to all the baseball fans and professionals who read Baseball Musings. Baseball Musings now covers 15 seasons of Major League Baseball and continues to be a labor of love. All of you make it possible.

I wish you a wonderful day with with your family and friends, delicious food, and safe travel!

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Kindred Moodyville by Fairborne

Coming soon to the up and coming Moodyville Neighbourhood of North Vancouver,  Kindred Moodyville is a fine collection of 96 homes consisting of 1 bedroom, 1 plus den and 2 bedrooms suites. Each home is is exceptionally designed with bright, spacious and modern interiors for the best livability in mind, complete with overheight ceilings and efficient floor plans

Moodyville Neigbourhood of North Vancouver is going under a massive transition. Currently consisting single family homes, this area was targeted by the City of North Vancouver as community to redeveloped into a new walkable pedestrian friendly neighbourhood.  Once completed, Moodyville will have 1500 homes within walking distance of Lower Lonsdale, with easy access to transit and trails to get you where you need to.

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Discussing The Role Of Sales Leadership In Driving Performance

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking to Noah Goldman on the Enterprise Sales Podcast about the importance of front line sales managers in maximizing the performance of their teams.  Join Noah and I in this discussion as we cover a wide variety of things, including:

How do we develop stronger and more diverse career paths for sales professionals?

How we help our people achieve their goals, so that we can achieve our goals?

The importance of “caring” as a sales leader?

What’s different about Millennials?

What’s critical for success as a front line sales leader?

How should sales leaders maximize impact of coaching?

….and more.

I hope you enjoy listening to the discussion as much as I enjoyed speaking with Noah!

 

 

Related Posts:

• The Toughest Job In Sales
• Are You Obsessing Over Your Front Line Managers?
• Losing Your Highest Performing Salesperson!
• Thinking About Sales Professional Development
• Should Sales Managers Coach?

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Time for Tough Talk

MLB and the MLBPA are negotiating a new labor agreement, and the players are not doing well. Therefore, they are taking their case to the press:

The owners will consider voting to lock out the players if the two sides cannot reach a new collective-bargaining agreement by the time the current deal expires on Dec. 1, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.

A lockout would put baseball’s business on hold, delaying free-agent signings and trades until a new agreement is reached. The winter meetings, a joint venture between the majors and minors scheduled to take place from Dec. 4 to 8 near Washington D.C., might still transpire, but without the usual frenzy of major-league activity.

The possibility of a lockout stems from the owners’ frustration with the players’ union over the slow pace of the discussions, sources said. The two sides still have more than a week to complete a deal, but a number of significant issues remain unresolved.

…

Two veteran players with knowledge of the talks, however, said that the players will fight for what they believe are the core beliefs and foundation of the union.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitive nature of the discussions.

“We are not afraid of a lockout,” one of those players said.

Remember, this is posturing. There is no reason to reach any kind of agreement until the last minute, because that is when you get the best deal. Every CBA is seems that people start worrying when the deadline gets close that labor trouble is on the way. What’s true is that everyone is doing rather well under the current system, and both sides would be foolish to trade that away. My guess is that thinks will be dark until an hour before the deadline, and then we’ll about amazing progress, and at worst a short extension of the negotiating period to get it done.

I personally think the the MLBPA is thinking too small lately. They want free agent compensation abolished, so MLB counters with trading that for an international draft. The two are not really equal, however, and there’s really no way of trading down from no compensation to some compensation. The MLBPA should have asked for no compensation, and two years until free agency, eliminating the need for arbitration in those cases. Then they could possibly get the international draft off the table, and maybe get rid of compensation and free agency after five years, which would be a big improvement.

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On The Desk - Pumpkin Pirate Part 3 - Would you take my candlelight?

This week I'll be talking through my process of painting the candle on his hat. This won't be a paint recipe guide, put paint A here, then paint B here etc. Instead I'll try and talk about the why of painting the candle, if you have candles in your own projects they might require different colours to fit those models but the principles will be the same. This proved to be quite a challenge. I spent a good amount of time looking at reference pictures to try and help me. I'll share some of these here so you can see how I go about doing this. 

I find it helpful loading my images into photoshop (or gimp or whatever editing tool you prefer) and using the colour dropper to make myself a swatch of the various colours in the image. It helps when mixing colours on the palette and just aids in really 'seeing' the image. Here are two good reference photos I found, and you can see quite a drastic colour palette difference to them. I liked the second one better for this bust, it's a closer fit to the lighting I have in mind for the piece although there will be a larger bright section due to the size of the flame on the candle on the bust.

I based the candle with a watered down mix of P3 Menoth White base and a flesh tone (GW Ratskin Flesh I believe) 

This was a little too pink so I glazed over it with more menoth white base until I was happy with it. I then worked with more glazes, pushing and pulling until I was close to my reference images. I used a cold blue (I think it's The Fang by GW) for the shadow areas of the candle, more easily seen from the back. The lower areas at the front have been highlighted as they will be lit from the fire in front of the model (out of shot so to speak), same as the rest of the model. Above the blue I used a desaturated red/brown to transition into the 'lit' area of the candle, where the candle light is showing through the wax.

The flame itself was the real tough area. I looked at a lot of photos of how candle flames behave (I even had a lit candle on my desk to look at!) The challenge is that candle flames are not solid objects, painting them as a 3D sculpt I found difficult. Once again I used my trusty photoshop to give me a good reference, I found a photo of a nice large flame. As you can see from the swatch the colours in the flame are actually fairly desaturated, there is no Ferrari red or super intense yellow.

One of the things that makes the flame so hard to paint is that it's translucent, something you just can't do with paint on a sculpt. Most of the candles in miniatures examples (unfortunately mostly at a much smaller scale) I found people just ignored the blue/black area at the bottom of the flame (which is the hottest part) and started at orange/yellow up to white at the tip. Given the larger scale of this candle (both in the bust sense and it being a pretty big flame) I wanted to try and start with the blue/black and work from there. I mixed up a set of colours on the palette from my reference image. You'll also notice that I started by painting the whole flame white. Best base to let me get the bright colours I want.

It was simply a case of adding the colours, blending as I go. From black (with a tip of blue) through to a muddy red, orange, then a desaturated yellow up to near white. I made the brightest part not the tip but about 2/3 up the flame. The tip I added in a small transition back to black.  

 

I'm really happy with how this turned out. It was initially a very intimidating part for me but by breaking it down, and using good reference images I ended up with something I'm very happy with.

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Pitchers and Defense

Baseball Think Factory links to a developing debate between Joe Posnanski and Sean Forman about the defensive adjustments to pitcher WAR at Baseball Reference. As someone who dabbled in measuring defense, figuring out how much some defense helped or hurt a particular pitcher is a tough problem.

The Posnanski piece wonders why rWAR rates Justin Verlander so much higher than Rick Porcello. The difference comes down to a defensive adjustment. The Red Sox rate as an excellent defense, the Tigers as a poor defensive team. Posnanski’s argument is that the Tigers played great defense behind Verlander, as his BABIP was .256 versus the team BABIP of .302. Forman’s argument is that the team’s defense is the team’s defense, and there’s no reason to think they got good because Verlander was on the mound. There is a lot of random variation in baseball, because nearly every set of individual stats is a small sample size.

When I worked on the Probabilistic Model of Range, one thing I liked to do was look at the expected outs a pitcher produced versus the actual outs recorded. Here’s a post from the end of the 2011 season, when Verlander won the Cy Young Award:

Notice that Justin Verlander and Josh Beckett both produced high expected DERs, but the defense magnified that by turning so many more batted balls into outs. Verlander pitched very well, but his defense gave him that extra push into the Cy Young.

Maybe that happened again. Maybe Verlander is just so good at inducing poor contact that even a bad defensive team looks good. I would love to know the expectations for Verlander’s and Porcello’s balls in play.

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5 Tips to Keep your Bathroom Warm This Winter

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

It’s easy to bundle up to keep yourself warm when it’s winter cold. But when it’s time to step into the bathroom, just the thought of it already gives you chills. Here are 5 things to do so you can make your bathroom experience warm and cozy despite the cold weather:

Image Source: Flickr

Efficiency Check
If your bathroom feels chillier than the rest of the house, the windows may be the culprit. Perform a quick test to see if your windows are letting in drafts by holding up a piece of tissue around the perimeter—if it moves, you have an air leak. Caulk around the window to prevent future air flow. Source: BobVila

Consider a Home Sauna
Historically much more common in countries like Sweden, saunas are becoming more popular in the States. Source: Houzz

Buy a Rug
Make sure it’s a rug made specifically for bathrooms, but not a plastic bathmat. Try to get a soft one, so it’s comfortable to walk on. Make sure it’s absorbent. Source: WikiHow

Install a Steam Shower
When your muscles ache or you’ve just braved a day filled with snow and slush, wouldn’t you love to treat yourself to an herb-scented steam bath? It’s possible to bring this health club experience home by transforming an ordinary shower stall into a rejuvenating steam shower. You can buy a steam-generating system for about $2,500, plus the cost of re-tiling and installing a steam-proof shower enclosure. There’s plumbing and electrical work involved, so you’ll need to hire pros for this job. Once installed, you’ll find your steam shower to be a relatively frugal energy consumer: A 20-minute steam bath requires about 2 gallons of water — a fraction of the 50 gallons used by a water-saving showerhead in the same time frame. Source: Bathrooms.About

Warm up your Towels
Heated towel racks are a quick and easy solution to warm things up. Just imagine stepping out of the shower to a nice warm towel. You can either install the rails, or have a freestanding rack, making this approach the simplest and most practical step towards a warmer bathroom. Source: Lifestyle

Contact:
Perfect Bath
Phone: Toll Free 1-866-843-1641
Calgary, Alberta
Email: info@perfectbath.com

The post 5 Tips to Keep your Bathroom Warm This Winter appeared first on Perfect Bath Canada.

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Posada Versus Rodriguez

Jorge Posada and Ivan Rodriguez reach the Hall of Fame ballot at the same time. Rodriguez is much more likely to get the induction nod due to his much longer career. Both men are the same seasonal age, but Rodriguez came to the majors at age 19 and contributed immediately. Posada played a bit starting at age 23, but did not become a full-time player until age 26. From 1998 to the end of their careers, Rodriguez led Posada in rWAR 43.7 to 42.4. That’s very close. Overall, however, Rodriguez leads Posada in rWAR 68.4 to 42.7. So Rodriguez put up impressive numbers before reaching his prime years.

Coming to the majors young is a good indicator of future greatness. The player gets more years to accumulate counting stats. In addition, to be major league ready at 19 or 20 requires talent, talent that usually keeps growing. Rodriguez is a great example of that.

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Understanding Customer Needs

I was listening to a “discovery call.”  It wasn’t much different than any other discovery call I’ve listened to.  The sales person was asking the customer about their needs.

As I listened to the questions, it struck me, the majority of the questions really weren’t about the customer’s needs but really about the product or solution.

They went like this:

• What are you looking for in a [Insert whatever category you sell–e.g. Sales Automation, Marketing Automation, Financial Systems, Machine Tool, New Building] solution?
• What features and capabilities are important to you in that solution?  And perhaps there was the drill down, Why is that important?
• What other capabilities are you looking for in a solution?

You get where I’m going.  All the questions were focused on the solution, but few were focused on the customers’ needs.

Yes, there are usually a few initial questions like, “What are you trying to achieve?”  but they are quickly followed by, “What are your expectations of a [Insert solution] to help you achieve this?”

Too often, our discovery questions really aren’t about the customer needs, but about our solutions, we convert the discovery call to be all about us and not about the customer.

To be fair, sometimes our customers, to our delight, fall into the same trap.  Particularly if they’ve already started on their buying journey.  They start to express their needs in terms of features, functions, feeds and speeds of a solution—“Do you handle multi-currency, what’s your warranty?”

True customer needs are rarely expressed as solution attributes, instead they are things they seek to achieve in their businesses or personally.

They want to improve their customer experience, reduce product design cycles, improve quality, reduce manufacturing cycle time, improve their abilities to engage customers, reduce waste, open new markets, expand share, increase revenues, decrease costs, improve profitability, improve shareholder value, be a better company/community citizen.  From a personal point of view, they want to reduce stress, get home for their kids’ soccer(football) game, get the bonus, get their boss off their backs, get a promotion, get some sanity in their lives, explore something new.

Most of our great questioning technique seek to explore the nature of those needs, whether it’s the 5 Why’s, Rackham’s SPIN, or Sinek’s Golden Circle.

Yet we rarely understand these customer needs.  We rarely get to any depth, we rarely explore the implications, the expected outcomes, the consequences of doing nothing.

Likewise, our customers have been well trained, they want to leap from needs to solutions and “What can you do for me.”

We all want those conversations, we revel in them.  They shorten our sales cycles and get us focused on what we are most comfortable with:  Talking about ourselves and our products.

There’s a problem with this, whether it’s us jumping to our solutions or our well trained customers jumping to these.

Until we understand why they want to/must change, what that change looks like, what they are trying to achieve, and their goals, we/they cannot build the business case to gain their management approval for the change.

Until we help the decision-making group align around these issues, they don’t know what they should be looking for in a solution, they won’t be able to reach agreement and move forward.  They are likely to end in doing nothing and achieving nothing.

Until we understand these, we don’t know how to position our offerings in the most impactful ways.

We give up so  much in our abilities to engage and create value when we focus on their solution needs, not their business needs.

Imagine how things would change, if we changed our approach to understanding their needs.

Related Posts:

• Our Customers Are Missing The Opportunity To ….
• There’s More To The Discovery Process Than Identifying
• Order Taker Or Solution Creator?
• It’s Not Your Close That Causes You To Win!
• Are Questions Only An Excuse To Tee Up Your Pitch?

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Mets #2

The New York Times profiles John Ricco, the Mets assistant GM and right-hand man to the last three Mets general managers:

Other teams tried to lure Ricco as well. When Minaya became the general manager of the Montreal Expos in 2002, his first call was to Ricco. Finally, in 2004, Ricco interviewed with the Mets and accepted Duquette’s offer to become his assistant general manager.

“I was brought in more because they knew I had experience with the rules and contracts,” Ricco said. “Those were the two areas and still remain my bread and butter.”

After a 91-loss season, Duquette was pushed aside and replaced by Minaya. The Mets made splashes over the next two years, trading for Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca and signing Pedro Martinez, Carlos Beltran and Billy Wagner.

“He kept everything together when I was there and allowed me to go and pursue the talent,” Minaya said. “In a lot of ways, he was running the whole operation.”

I find it odd that someone so well respected did not move up to the GM position, either with the Mets or with another club. The Mets could rename positions to make Alderson president of baseball operations and Ricco GM, as a number of organizations do. Or it could be that Ricco likes a role where he doesn’t need to take the heat from the press and the fans.

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Blast From the Past

At FanGraphs, David Laurila appears to have revived the old Peter Gammons Sunday notes column. Bud Black talks about Mike Scioscia in the lead:

“Mike is open,” said Black. “At times, people have said that he’s not, but believe me, Mike is open. I’d like to think I’m progressive enough to be open as well. Very open. The managers I know, my closest guys — Tito (Terry Francona), John Farrell, Joe Maddon, Mike — we all want to be educated on why. The last decade has taught all of us managers and coaches to be more curious than we ever were before. Times have changed.”

Of course, openness to new ideas is one thing, and implementation is another. Scioscia has seemingly made strides in both areas, with more room to grow in the latter. As for Black — his approach to analytics, and how he plans to implement them in Colorado — stay tuned. We’ll hear more from him in the coming week.

The column is full of great tidbits.

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Big Difference from a Small Sample

In looking at the Royals batting statistics for 2016, it struck me that the team did a great job of getting hits on balls in play with a .309 BABIP, but that was somewhat countered by their increased strikeouts during the season. Striking out 251 times more than they did in 2015 should have cost them around 75 hits. In fact, it only cost them 47 hits, but 49 runs. Was there some issue with the timing of the hits and strikeouts that made a big difference?

The answer turned out to be yes. In 2015, the Royals performed extremely well in a rather rare situation, hitting with a runner only on third. To be precise, one runner on base, and that runner on third. In their championship year, the Royals hit .358/.434/.543 in that situation with 19 K in 219 PA, producing 85 RBI. In 2016, their slash line dropped to .200/.271/.312 with 58 K in 199 PA, producing 52 RBI. The difference in RBI is 2/3 of the difference in runs scored between the two clubs. Nearly 16% of their increase in strikeouts came in just 1.6% of their plate appearances.

In 2015 and 2016, the Royals were excellent at putting the ball in play. About 200 PA in each season in a very specific situation made a huge difference in their overall offensive performance. It’s a reason they beat pundits forecasts in 2015, but lived up to them in 2016. There is a lot of luck built into a baseball season.

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Basius 3 - Texturis Kickstarter Unboxing

Wargames Bakery recently ran a 4th Basius Kickstarter for their brand new mini Basius pads, the Texturis range. I'd previously picked up a couple of larger double sided Version 2 pads so I thought I'd give some of these little ones a go.

I showed an uncharacteristic level of restraint and picked up 8 of the 76 available designs.

The pads are roughly 50mm square, though some are a little smaller (40-45mm) to allow for pads with repeatable designs to not have overlapping sections. A number of them are cut down highlights of their bigger pads for a fraction of the price and weight - it looks great having a shelf full of pads but they're rather hefty so these little stampers are great alternative.

I mostly picked up different styles, though 3 of them I picked out for my new Eldar army that can now hit the building stage!

The mini pads themselves are quite small compared to the Version 2 pads - you could fit 9 of them on a single pad, if you had 9.

It's all well and good showing off pads, but how do they do?

I started off the Eldar style ones - The Eloar, Crafted World and Spirit Stone. They'll probably look better on bigger bases, which is a shame as most Eldar are on 25mm bases. They're different designs and heights, but they all have the same light thorn pattern through them which ties them together.

Misty Mountains and Tundra are both rocky and mountain-like with large deep sections so I didn't play with those this time around as the Misty Mountain rocks will eat a lot of GS that I don't want to use until I actuall need them. However, I did use the other three - Factory, Manowar and Tank Trax.

The factory pad has 3 metallic textures on it, with the two main textures split up by the rivetted cross beam.

Manowar is one of several wood effect pads which creates a wood flooring effect. There is a Greenstuff World textured roller that creates a similar effect but it's planks are a lot wider and deeper, closer to bark than finished planks.

Tank Trax is another base for 40k in my book - the track design is a close replica of Imperial tank tracks - I'm not sure how similar it is to the likes of Bolt Action tanks as I don't own any, but used sparingly I think it'll add a bit of character to some bases across an army. This base is a 32mm base, so I think that as with the Eldar style bases this looks better on larger bases so you have enough space so that the tracks don't take up the entire base.

That's a whistlestop look at my latest Kickstarter arrival - I'm expecting one more before Christmas to add to the three I've now received over the last 4 or 5 weeks. The team at Wargames Bakery make great basing pads so I'm looking forward to getting full use out of these.

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