His name is “Zonkey” — a little thought provoking humor…

Posted by Chad Koser in Selling to Zebras Monday, 27 April 2009 13:58 2 Comments

zonkey Our little friend in the foreground named “Zonkey,” is the result of what happens when sales people make the decision to pursue prospects that are not Zebras… You may by chance win the deal, but the outcome of that deal will more than likely prove undesirable for both you and your customer. Your solution was not matched to your customer’s need(s), making it impossible for you to Force Success, and therefore:

1. You will not be able to provide the customer with what is needed to fulfill the promised project goals. In the end, the only thing that matters is real results achieved by your customers.

2. Lack of ability to achieve effective and timely results will waste both yours and the customers valuable, limited resources (time, money, people)

3. Your reputation for consistently meeting customer expectations will be negatively impacted. Remember: satisfied customers may tell one or two others or may volunteer to serve as reference accounts for you, but dissatisfied customers tend to be far more vocal on a very voluntary basis.

The moral of this light-hearted blog is that in the end, the only thing that matters is real results achieved by your customers, and the only guarantee of real results is the pursuit of Zebras. Don’t be a Zonkey… Get the picture?

-ZC

Tags: Force Success, Strategic Growth, Zebra Selling

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 1:58 PM and is filed under Selling to Zebras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

http://smartchoicemri.com Eric H

ZC,

This is obviously where the saying “Half-ass” comes from.

I must admit I kind of like this Zonkey, but if I’d ordered a zebra I’d be pretty disappointed. Customers want exactly what they’ve paid for. If you need to sell them on what they’ve bought after you’ve sold it you probably didn’t do all that good of a job of determining what they needed in the first place. Like you said; chasing business that isn’t a good fit is not just a wast of time, even worse, the damage done can’t be reversed. Getting the bad taste out of an unsatisfied customer’s mouth is about as hard as turning that Zonkey into a “real zebra”. You can paint some stripes on it, but it’ll still say HeeHaw when it wants a carrot. Some things “just aren’t natural”.
http://www.sellingtozebras.com Chad Koser

Excellent expansion on the idea Eric! Thank you for the valuable commentary… Yes, if you hold out a carrot and your “Zebra” says, “Heehaw,” I’d suggest you slowly turn and walk away! It’s kind of like the old skunk Peppy le Pew on the Warner Brother’s Bugs Bunny cartoons — he can paint a white stripe on that female black cat all he wants to, but in the end he’s still not chasing a skunk… ironic that they were black and white striped animals too, isn’t it? (laughing)