Читать книгу Elite Sales Strategies - Anthony Iannarino - Страница 25

One of the ways you improve your ability to be One-Up is by being One-Down when you need to be. In one of my first jobs as a field salesperson, I called on large distribution centers in my territory of Columbus, Ohio. It was a target-rich environment, and I had homed in on a number of very large prospects, each one spending millions of dollars with companies in my industry. Having won one of the largest retail distribution centers in the city, I was learning how best to take care of their needs. My main client was a seasoned veteran of the business, and he invited me to sit in on his planning meeting, an indication that he favored me over my competitors.

The conversation I was listening to was in a language I didn't speak. First, the managers and leaders used a lot of acronyms that made no sense to my ears. Second, they used lot of jargon. While I didn't yet have the concept of being One-Down, I felt it. I was lost. When I left the meeting, I asked my main contact to help me make sense of what I heard, especially the term throughput. It's not difficult to guess the meaning of the word, but for this group, it was a math equation. He patiently explained to me that the throughput was a calculation based on how much product they shipped divided by the cost of their labor. They had goals around throughput. He showed me how they kept score on a spreadsheet. A few weeks later, I walked into a different prospective client's distribution center and asked my main contact what their throughput numbers were like during their peak season. He was stunned by the question, as no one else in my role would have known to ask. There is no way I was One-Up when it came to running a distribution center, but I was One-Up on any and all of my competitors. Without knowing that I was being taught to be One-Up, I was gaining a competitive advantage by asking my client to educate me about their business, correcting my One-Downness.