Toe-Tapping Deal-Signing Algorithms

No algorithm is omniscient.

You don’t need to be a fan of dystopian near-future sci-fi to know this.

To slavishly follow the diktats of an algorithm can often mean missing out on a genuine moment of game- (& life-?) changing opportunity.

Here’s 2021 autobiographical musing of an 81yo world record holder. For longest female radio DJ career. England’s Annie Nightingale. Specifically on what she considers the worst modern technology;

I also hate the algorithm. I don’t like being told what I’m going to like, whether it’s music, art, food, or anything. I’ll deliberately not like things because I’m being told to. I want to be the one who breaks the algorithm, I don’t want to be told what to like. And it might not even find anything that you’d really, really like because it’s always going to play it safe based on what you liked before. I don’t want to be predictable like that.

Anyone that’s suffered the blandness of the safe, unimaginative and repetitious auto-generated Spotify playlist servings on which she riffs from here will doubtless agree. I’m taken back to the original pioneer in this space around fifteen years back, Pandora. You’d start off with your specified track. Then the idea was their AI would magically deliver you all manner of similar tunes, including those new to you, from that track starting point. I sadly found it disastrous. Inaccurate whether selections were mainstream genre or obscure niche. No matter how many times you thumbs-upped or -downed each song.

I’m big on an algorithm of sorts. In terms of your sales process. That pattern of events, actions and aims that when occurring, pretty much guarantee you will prevail.

Yet what this DJ quote reminds me, is that this winning, repeatable, sustainable formula is never set in stone. Nor should it be. The tectonic plates of market forces and weather seasons of individual players combine for environmental change. From the daily to annual, small incremental to large seismic.

The best performing sellers and salesteams are always seeking to refine their process, refine their success algorithm.

Trying out slightly or radically different ideas. Pushing boundaries or compacting pressures. Whether broadening departure or reductive focus.

And often such attempts can be fairly far removed from the trajectory of current thinking.

The trick is twofold. Realising you can give something a little out of the ordinary a go. And sensing the right time and place when to do so.

There’s a certain skill to these.

And you must be prepared for misses as well as hits, the iterations of experiment and the reticence of others to understand ‘the new’.

No sales process should ever be considered as the finished article. It is in a constant state of flux. Forever liable to change and adaptation, evolution or revolution.

Yet set off with all this in mind, and overall your results will be better, for longer and be easier to replicate.

So what can you ‘modify, add or change’ with your ‘algorithm’ today?

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