“I don’t like strict adherence to a script,” she said. “I prefer that my SDRs have authentic conversations.”
That was the response of a sales manager to my advice that she get her SDRs to comply to a script when making cold calls. I was brought in by the CEO to fix their marketing and underperforming team. Not only were they not hitting their quota, but the appointments they were setting were poor – and that’s being generous in my assessment.
Unfortunately, the owner sided with her, not because she was right, but because he was unwilling to deal with the headache of disciplining her and, eventually, finding her replacement. “Good sales managers are hard to find,” he said.
This sort of nonsense runs rampant in business everywhere. “Romantic ideas” that sound as if they are founded in strategy, purpose and sound principles but are merely excuses to get out of doing the dirty, nasty and gritty work that needs to be done.
Disciplining sales reps to adhere to a script and process, holding them accountable when they don’t (and most don’t) and eventually replacing them is NOT fun. I get it. But thinking rigor, discipline and accountability is an antiquated, primitive way of managing the “modern workforce” is a romantic idea.
Most bestselling business books have romantic ideas at the core. Think And Grow Rich. The 4-Hour Workweek. Clock Work. Start With Why. The One Minute Manager. Story Brand. No disrespect to the authors because they’re writing books that people want to buy. Books about how life should work. About how leadership should happen. Affirmations that good people always win because they have a pure heart.
They sell because we all want to believe that there’s an easier way of doing what we do, and if we could just find that simple key to unlock the game, we wouldn’t have all the stress, anxiety, failure, disappointments, struggle, cost and difficulty we have.
Simple, romantic ideas.
Many years ago, when starting TMT, I was attending a Genius Network event run by my good friend Joe Polish. Ken Glickman, a brilliant marketer, was sharing with the group how he was intentionally NOT selling his program to people who were struggling to get their business to work and were persistently broke, stating, “They’ll never do anything with it anyway.”
I was outraged. In an idealistic rant, I told him that I could help those people…that my program could enable someone like that to get their business to grow, and he shouldn’t dismiss or give up on those poor folks who needed his help the most.
Boy, was I wrong.
Fast-forward 18 years later and I wish I could go back to Ken and apologize. The idea of “no child left behind” is a romantic idea. The sad and sorry truth is that some of ’em aren’t going to make it. Years later, after working with thousands of MSPs, from startups to 9-figure platform MSP leaders, I can absolutely tell you that the majority of MSPs do nothing, change nothing and cannot get out of their own way no matter WHAT you give them, teach them and do for them.
Napoleon Hill has an entire chapter in Think And Grow Rich dedicated to this very premise: Accurate thinking. It’s the discipline of separating what we wish or want to be true from what actually IS true.
As an entrepreneur, you need to get all the romantic ideas out of your head IF you truly want to grow and prosper.
Not all clients are going to be good clients, even if you always do right by them. Not all employees will rise up and do the right thing, even if you pay them well and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Creating a no-pressure, non-manipulative (which is code for NO SELLING) sales process where you just present the options to your prospect and leave it entirely up to them to choose what is best for them is a romantic idea.
You need a SALESPERSON who can chew meat off the bone to show up and convince people to buy what is best for them. Prospects left to their own whims and desires will OFTEN make poor value judgments and misinformed decisions because of their romantic ideas about cybersecurity and the importance of strategic IT.
If you want to succeed in business, keep the romance for your spouse on Valentine’s Day, not in your business, where money is made…or lost.
Stop chasing romantic ideas and start applying real strategies that drive MSP growth. Join us this September in Newark or Chicago for the AI-Powered MSP Summit, where industry leaders will share tactical AI strategies you can use to streamline operations and scale smarter. Secure your ticket today.
