Albert Einstein said “ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

When you apply this to business you can see how much sense it makes.

I’ve coached company owners who keep doing what they’ve always done. And often the reason they continue to do the same thing is fear.

Fear that if they stop doing what they’re doing the sales they have will slip away.

One client I worked with had always cold called prospects. He’d always called them and he expected his sales team to do the same. It was hard work and the amount of sales they had was pathetic. And yet it was a good quality business.

I asked whether they had any other strategy for getting sales. I was met with a blank look and he said we do get some referrals.

When I asked what they did to encourage referrals I was told they did nothing.

After I’d gone into detail in their business it was obvious that they had a service that other companies could offer to their own clients. They’d never even tried direct mail, email or any form of advertising, other than a bad Yellow Pages ad.

If each of those different strategies could provide targeted leads for sales. The sales people wouldn’t need to make so many cold calls and could spend more time converting sales. Thus increasing sales, using sales people more effectively and having less stress from the regular cycle of frantic calls followed by sales visits when few cold calls were made.

However, the owner refused to try any new strategy to get new sales. He wanted to continue with the one he knew and felt comfortable with. He knew what he’d get and yet by not testing other approaches he was simply making life hard for himself and his sales team. And he lived on a profits knife edge, any drop in sales had the power to take him into the red within a couple of months.

Was he insane?

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