Your Teacher Appears
In conversation with someone wondering where all the buyers were - and not solely induced through state policy horror - I offered the time-honoured soothe that stems from the adoption curve.
Simply put, it helps you realise that not everyone is ready to buy at the same time. Take-up happens at different stages. And helpfully, models let us put numbers to each separate cohort of readiness.
These groups are not only split dependent on how established our wares are. In the solution sell sense, they also divide by how receptive for change they are.
Many of my commissions as freelance 'gig' sales helper down the years have been for what I long since term New Product Rescue.
There's a new (often tech based) Enterprise product launched. Despite the trumpets, chorus lines and juicy extra bonus plan, it doesn't quite set the world alight as expected.
It would be nice to get involved before this blunt force of reality strikes.
But as I've found, no-one seems to want help prior launching.
As I can politely point out to an entire industry, Einstein did say "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". And I lament to report that those with a key new product to launch tend to repeat the mistakes of ones past.
I would even say overwhelmingly. As the possibly most cited study on B2B new product sales suggested 72pc fail.
How can you help yourself become the roughly one-in-four that actually succeed?
Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.
An orphanage in our case stacked with the full range from hubris and arrogance, through unseen competitor shifts and sudden market upheaval, to bad timing and just 'luck' or lack thereof.
Pitching the 'new' we can significantly improve our odds though.
For there are those predisposed to look favourably upon what's fresh.
In the sixties Everett Rogers called them early adopters.
Thirty years on Geoffrey Moore termed them enthusiasts and visionaries.
Although aimed at tech adoption behaviour, they can resonate beyond.
When you link these with an element of change required, things get even more interesting.
One of our most useful being the TTM model.
How beneficial would it be to find all those already 'contemplating' the kind of angle we alone bring to market now?
There's also the mapping of such as the trad Strategic Selling framework, where those in the Trouble phase will be afflicted and desperate for help.
These are where the phrase of my title above fits.
"when the student is ready, the teacher appears"
What we unleash, theses pupils are entering the zone for. Mentally, they sense they must act. We can make it happen. We allow action.
Be sure you appear when they're ready. These want us to find them. We shan't let them down, right?