If you're looking for a story about some salesdrip, a provocative statement about sales, another pulpit-pounding sermon on honesty or sage advice about how to this or how to that, I'm afraid that today I will sorely disappoint.
No, my friends, today I'm going to do something just a tad more self serving. At least it's a story, and you might even glean an idea of your own, but never let it be said that I failed to warn you of an upcoming sales pitch.
I'm an idea guy to my core. So much so, in fact, that I've started, built and totally abandoned three successful companies, because I succumbed to the "Ooohh, that's shiny" syndrome and quickly set off on a quest toward something else. (Inventors like me usually waffle between rich and broke dozens of times, but we always have fun.)
Anyway, one idea I've always had and never been able to pull off, however, was that I would love to be paid for my ideas.
The problem with getting paid for ideas, you see, is you can't put a price on them until after you've had them, and once you've had them the cat is out of the bag.
About 16 months ago (December 2006), I was sitting with Matthew Homann of realBIGthinking -- we were having one of our idea chats -- and Matt asked me "When you're working through problems with a sales team, what, exactly, happens?"
In my response I included the eight words that actually launched this concept: "It's sort of like a transfusion of ideas."
Almost immediately after those words came out of my mouth, I thought "Idea Transfusion -- that's kinda cool." And since there were only six hits in Google at the time (now there are 15), and the domain name was available, I bought it knowing that someday I'd find a way to use it.
Fast forward to August 3, 2007. I was sitting at an association meeting and T. R. (Tom) Hughes -- a local CEO of a very successful construction company -- was telling the story of how he grew his business. About halfway through his speech he quipped, "Remind me to tell you about this consultant I know. You get all his help up front, then you pay him whatever you think it was worth."
I honestly don't remember a word of Tom's speech after that, because the forces of the universe had suddenly collided in a "triad of shiny":
Get paid for ideas ... Idea Transfusion ... Pay me whatever you think the ideas are worth
"I absolutely MUST take this consultant to lunch" my eardrums screamed, "So I can find out how that works."
Unfortunately for me, Tom had a twist at the end of his speech -- the consultant he mentioned received all requests through prayer.
Of course, if a single shiny idea is enough to get me to close a company, you can imagine my inability to resit a Triad of Shiny. So by that Sunday I had launched an Idea Transfusion session and written a blog entry about it.
Since that day I've done two sessions with two sales teams -- both resulting in wonderful ideas, thrilled clients and really nice checks. And today I launched the Idea Transfusion Team -- the exact same concept only instead of just me, it's me and 28 other crazy attorneys, accountants, consultants, coaches, mentors, trainers, entrepreneurs, etc.
See http://www.IdeaTransfusion.com. (No, it's not a new company -- just a brand through which we're providing these unique facilitation and presentation services.)
And let the games begin.
Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association
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