I Can Train Penalty Shooting

Really?!

That was the cold pitch of a German neuroscientist to an elite football coach a couple of years back. Here's how the grateful manager relayed that exchange, in the aftermath of a victory he dedicated to them.

"Neuro11 got in contact with us two years ago. One of them is a neuroscientist and he said 'we can train penalty shooting' I thought ‘really, that sounds interesting, come over' ".

The rest, as they say, is history. In the second of the season's successful shootout wins, the boss even explained the one missed kick was down to his misplaced meddling. He chided himself for telling the taker to change his usual routine.

My point today is not to rehash what we learnt back in March. It is the more pertinent angle around the selling of anything 'new'.

The 'prospect' was a coach renowned for being innovative. Trying new ideas.

A man who has employed data scientists, cutting edge and at the time ridiculed approaches to the set-play of throw-ins, and taken on novel approaches to ingraining certain patterns of play in his players such as the infamous win-back-possession 8sec giant countdown clock.

Maybe he was always going to be receptive to something most others would feel a bit too 'out-there'?

Did the brain man try anyone else in the game before? We may never know.

But we do know though, that his pitched worked. He got the meeting.

There's two winners from this for us.

The first being that there is a sentence that similarly begins, "I can..." for us.

What is it?

Our next word is the verb. The action.

The object, is where the improvement occurs.

For my own present endeavours, I wondered on this as a starting point;

"I can unlock distinctive video sales calls".

I'm sure I could make this better once I say it 'live' a few times too.

How would your sentence sound?

Then second, is the context of the pitchee.

The famed ratio of 'early adopters' is an immutable law in new tech selling.

This prospect who became a buyer is a rarity. But not so much as you'd fear.

The numbers are solid.

One in six and a quarter fit the bill.

4/25, writ another way.

16% of people are naturally predisposed to consider anything 'new'.

Meaning roughly five other people would dismiss such an invite before the next person might give due consideration your way.

Are you playing these odds correctly as well?