Labs Unit Seeking The Selling Of Next Week

I saw an intriguing reminder of one of my longtime themes.

Arguably the world’s richest sporting competition, the EPL (English Premier League), is ‘considering joining the NFT craze’.

Details appear to involve a licensing tie-in with a French virtual card trader start-up.

The EPL have been here before. I myself was involved in the mid-90s caricature 3-inch figurine which exploded into the toy market in England, courtesy of manufacturer Corinthian. Sales expectations hugely surpassed. I remember the clamour to even put product on planes out of Hong Kong so enormous was demand. Let alone the back-office scramble to try keeping up.

Yet there’s so much to admire in the thinking this may represent.

I often ask Sales leadership, ‘what’s on your benches’?

Indeed, as an aside given the seism now hurtling ‘remote’ work ever more our way, you could also insert as an adjective ‘blended’ before that noun.

With many a sector, having a deliberately ‘out-there’ innovation unit is often visible.

Think of the retailer that creates a sub-brand in-store. Small batch sizes, almost sample-esque, edgy designs. With winners being refined or simply adopted as mainstream within their main offering.

Then there’s manufacturers. What self-respecting car maker for instance doesn’t wheel out an amazing futuristic prototype during show season. Drivers to drool at their ingenuity, inside and out. With key features and design hits happily incorporated down the line.

So what about our sector? The engine room that is mainly B2B commercial tech?

Where’s our mini-team, working party, sub-committee looking at how, what, why and where we sell?

Those encouraged to try out new thoughts.

Even better, when aligned with endeavours to refine the winning process.

To sing even more melodically, what cross-functional input is also brought in? As we know that on the edges is where true creativity scores big.

Members can flit in and out of the Lab. Short-term or long stints. Split between part- and full-timers too.

This set-up especially useful when you’ve a new product development mindset.

The search for Alpha customers brings dividends that the usual ‘rah-rah’ big launch to the salesteam never fails to miss out on.

If your selling enterprise has made room for such a Labs operation, it will be more successful than if not.