Danshari Your Funnel

Spring buds sunnily into life where I blog today.

London’s Times (subscription) has the above piece on the Japanese ways of tidying up. Termed danshari.

Spring-clean a pullout theme.

I’ve noted before the queen of the genre, konmari, and her call for you to only cling onto to those possessions which truly “spark joy” for you.

This day, they highlight who they describe as the “Stalinist of decluttering”. Not perhaps a label Fumio Sasaki will pop on his cv. Even if they may not necessarily mean it nastily.

It’s because this 37-yr old singleton is an ever more brutal minimalist. He advocates taking pictures of items that hold soulful meaning, then chucking them regardless. He reckons you’ll never even look at the photo anyway. So don’t get tied in torment over any ridiculous “fear of regret”.

The selling parallel is clear.

Time to declutter your funnel?

I was fascinated with a couple of the reviewing journalist’s summations which could have been uttered by experienced, forward thinking sales management.

‘expel freeloading interlopers … things that won’t pitch in with the rent’

I’m not talking about the comedy eternal prospect. Nor the tyre-kicking wrong-level perma-enquirer. Nor the makeweight seeking incumbent-supporting ‘need-three’ trying to fill a corporate procurement edict quote quota.

Although naturally we should be hot on ejecting such from our land.

What about those bids which do not fit tightly – or even remotely closely – with clients gained before?

There’s too heaped a misunderstanding that surrounds this central Sales idea.

I’ve had long discussions educating on the merits of ideal prospect profiles, psychographics and process matching. Qualifying Out is the revealing discipline that only the superstars master. What bigger waste of time do salespeople suffer than coming second? A career crippling trend that can be consigned to the rare rather than recurrent.

As today’s found-among-the-marigolds wisdom knows;

“concentrate not on what you are losing, but what you will gain; space, freedom, energy”