By Thomas Barry, Guest Blogger — LearningWithoutScars.com
“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
However, it is a long and lonely day sitting at your home or office as an order taker waiting for prospective customers to come knocking or calling! Especially, when you realize that customers either purchase logically and support their decision emotionally or purchase emotionally and support their decision logically. Either way, you must be prepared to cover both sides of these motivating drivers! The more you practice, drill, and rehearse… the better the odds of a favorable outcome!
In what follows is a true-life portable mobile cellphone sales presentation story which shares insight of contrasting styles of differentiating value propositions, and the importance of strategy preparation. In our country which now boasts nearly three hundred million handheld cellphones, it is a time warp journey through a level of abstract reasoning for Generation Z to appreciate a past world where there was a need for investment justification for the availability, rental, or ownership of a mobile cellphone. Nevertheless, new technology is always a blink away and so are the strategies and skillsets required to be ready to gently lead prospects to the latest and greatest products in a manner that serves to illuminate clear recognition of existing afflictions/challenges so to desire a new improved reality!
Preamble: By 1985 in the San Francisco, CA Bay Area, the first six (6) cell phone towers were constructed. The TV announcements began with local news coverage that related their completion and soon to come launch of cellphone services. Specifically, the event to showcase the technological event was for five (5) Site Seeing Air Touring Balloons to be launched from remote Bay Area locations. Each group of Balloon travelers were outfitted with a portable cellphone so that the ground-based chase vehicles, also equipped with same, could communicate via their portable mobile phones in order to coordinate the precise wind influenced landing spots for each Air Balloon trek. Timely retrieval, safety, and efficiency were to be showcased! Truth be told, a couple of Air Balloons full of passengers and an experienced pilot crashed and started fires, others landed far off the cellular grid and resultantly, the cellphones did not all perform as anticipated.
Note: Portable Cell Phones at the time ranged in MSRP from…$2,000 to $6,500. There were two models to choose from. The lower priced unit was akin to a car battery with a carry handle and a phone handset with a keypad (approx. weight of 20 lbs.). The higher price unit was a transportable unit that was designed to be installed in a car with the transceiver in the trunk and a portable handheld handset mounted near the dash which could also be detached and carried in a purpose designed suitcase (approx. weight of 8 lbs.). Both units had handsfree speaker capabilities. The limited battery portable life technology of the day required overnight charging for generating just hours of standby or call usage.
