When Sales Happiness Arises From Expectation

Because sometimes the lure of the planet’s biggest English-language “news” site is just too shiny. Happiness has a formula. Yes, another one. This time, courtesy of a cash-mountained ex-Googler called Mo;

So what is the magic formula, I hear you ask. It’s
H ≥ e – E
Or in other words:
happiness is greater than or equal to the events of life, minus the expectations of life.

Given at how this was arrived at – albeit tragically, yet the Average Jo programmed to baulk at the filthy rich claiming ‘money ≠ happy’ theme – I can see Jimmy Carr doing his fake eye-rubbing boo-hoo.

I can hear readers with grey hairs chant, “Events, dear boy, events”. So what’s striking about this, is that expectations seem to outweigh events by dint of owning the capital E, as opposed to the small e.

The imminent big deal you tell everyone you’ll nail for sure ages beforehand holds less punch than the one you keep fairly coy about. A lesson in that alone perhaps. Always stay just this side of sandbagging, avoid the 100% “must pledge” urge and know (explicitly list) the areas of decision process blancmange when parading a senior exec.

I’ve blogged on the many happiness equations before (like here, for example).

Your deal W is more likely when you follow the process you’ve done for previous success. If it’s early in your Sales “journey”, include here finding the pain, showing the most apt resolution for it and persuading more and pivotal people that there’s a personal and professional win in it for them to sign with you.

That indeed does tend to bring a big fat juicy fun-loving dollop of H.

Here’s a conversation starter; W ≥ a – E. Where W is your win, a actual, E Expectation.

I sense the largest lesson here, is that on expectations.

I’m reminded of one concerning price tag.

Early doors, you say it’ll be reasonable. Only for the cost to the prospect to balloon later. Not as a consequence of spec creep or any other simply explainable influence. But because you knew from the off that you’d never get on the longlist with your standard pricing.

Then you think on the functionality promise.

At the start of my career, I was instructed that in any deal’s initial meeting, whatever the question, my answer was ‘yes’.

Only for later that show-stopping piece of requirement to need pricey, bottomless pit bespoke modifications.

Qualification. I’m tempted to whisper.

You want the long term, repeatable, sustainable success of a stellar selling career, then set your expectations in check and with fine-tuned nice balance.