Imagine being on a sailing ship in a storm. Or underwater and one of the scuba divers has a serious problem. Alternatively: Your department or even the whole company threatens to fall into economic slump. And now ask yourself:
Do you have time for ineffective actions in such a situation?
The question may seem terse, but it´s not. In many organizations, one is used to do things in order to have anything done. Sometimes it´s more about actions than results and performance. Just think about the large numbers of meetings, in which individual attendees keep saying and asking nothing. In toto: contribute nothing. No less annoying emails with cc-mailing lists that are as big as the equator is long. Over and over again, the same colleagues who blurt out something into the audience just to show that they have worked a bit too.
Crisis situations are moments of scarcity. It’s about everything, about survival. In most cases, the situation is confusing and time, the time to act and react, remains limited. Also, there is often a lack of resources. In such times there is no room for senseless and ineffective actions. Every move has to be spot on, every punch must be a strike.
Telling blows or shadow boxing?
Shadow boxing may be nice and good when it comes to practicing the boxer’s skills. When it comes to be prepared for the fight. But shadow boxing has no justification at all when it comes to survival in crisis.
Crisis situations are moments of concerns and anxiety. When it comes down to the business and the bones, we feel stress and fears can overpower us. Many of us will never or rarely have experienced such a situation, we lack the experience of having survived the fight.
What does telling blows in sales mean?
Here I have a clear opinion. It’s certainly not about killing the customer. Something like that is completely alien to me, sales is not a martial art, but resembles a pas de deux between customers and providers. However, it is about getting things done or initiating and completing actions that are relevant to the client and your organization. Everything else is frippery and nonsense.
Only actions that have a positive effect on customers and suppliers are in focus. We must put all our effectiveness into these actions.
In crisis, dilemmas are to be avoided and the decision as to whether a small number of effective telling blows or the large number of individual actions are more important is a clear predicament. And we cannot use these in the crisis, we must get rid of such exhaustive loss of time and energy because it is here to tackle bravely.
That is why I believe that in the crisis effective punches and telling blow actions should be given primacy.
I look forward to your contributions and the discussion with you.
