Is Your Prospect California or Morocco?

Where I am currently, a new passenger rail line just opened in England's North East. An area seemingly forever starved of investment, it created quite the buzz. But not for why you'd hope.

The track was already there. Used by freight. Going strong sixty years.

Stations existed at the termini of the route. Four new ones planned in-between.

At just 18 miles long, locals tantalisingly glimpsed a vital revival from their transport connections coming together.

Yet obtaining permission proved Kafkaesque. Chugging away for three decades.

Final bill?

£300m.

That's nearly £17m a mile.

Given how that fits neatly alongside yards in a mile, take a pace. At those costs, you've just made a ten grand step.

It ought be a national shame. Yet the ruling uniparty metropolitan liberal elite laugh.

Then wonder why no-one invests in the UK.

But still don't care.

I note similar malaise afflicts the American state of California [sub'n req'd];

"in the 2000s California invited bids for construction of a high-speed rail line through the state, the French rail firm SNCF tendered a proposal – only to withdraw it in 2011 to work on a similar project in Morocco, whose government, the SNCF engineers declared, was less politically dysfunctional than California’s. Morocco’s high-speed railway began operating in 2018. California’s is still not completed."

Quite an American Dream.

Pitching an Enterprise product, the cowboy age of sell-and-run is fading. Those of us never so diseased have made positively infectious great progress.

Subscription payments helped a lot. As did an emerging strive towards collaborative selling. Combined with the ever more stringent annual supply reviews. Even if the latter can frighteningly lean towards myopic counters of beans 'knowing the value of nothing'.

I'm reminded of one of the more commonplace sales system mnemonics.

From the mid-90s, MEDDIC represents the six must-cover angles.

To which some nowadays slip in a 'P' after the Ds.

Standing for paperwork, it feels a little ambiguous. As Decision Process would often include the paper process too. But as freshly highlighted it allows for tacit attention.

Where this rubric has always faced critique, is in its seller-orientation.

Yet whether a buyer has the resources and wherewithal to make what you provide succeed for them, and ultimately keep in place, is surely vital.

The path is to know what your client buying, ordering, implementing, maintaining and reporting procedures are like.

And if too troublesome, qualify out.

SNCF realised this in that US 'Golden State'.

For truly sustainable, repeatable, rocketing solution sales ditch your Californias, and embrace your Moroccos.