Jakob Dyrbye’s Post

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another day in the Christmas calendar and as you can see, I'm in the car. I'm on my way to Christmas evening. I wish. Anyway, this is a short story I would like to tell you about something we call the tournament the principle or we used to call it the final terminology or something. So, feel free to come up with a better word. Hopefully you'll make sense the whole thing in in just a second. The point is in my story goes that not too long ago I was hosting a workshop and it was it was a company that participated in In human resource events and imagine you're in the room, it's a long table and at the end of the table there's a what we would call an alpha male. And his colleagues were on the side of the table. I was up there with the screen and trying to tell a little story from the real world. And we're talking about objectives, we're talking about lead processes, we're talking about all these things that we need to talk about. However, at one point the guy at the at the end of the table told me quite aggressively actually that he kind of hated and loathed to go to these events because he always just met with the assistants and clerks and human resource coordinators, stuff like that. And I asked him politely, so what's wrong with that? And the problem for him was that he was used to signing big contracts and he kind of felt that he wasted his time being at the stand, being at the trade show, at the event because he never met with real people. That made me think because in the sports world you have this cup system, you have this tournament system and this guy was in so many ways just playing the finals. So I asked him, so do you ever play any finals? Do you ever sign any contracts equal to the final at the trade show, at the event? And he said no, I never do that. I just waste my time talking to all these for him wrong people and the atmosphere got a little bit dark and moody and stuff like that and I asked him so... Honestly, what are you doing at the trade show? Because, obviously there's no role for you to play in this context. So all of this leads to a thought about, you know, playing a tournament. And the good thing about this type of tournament is you cannot lose. If you are in the final, at the trade show, at the event, at the convention, at the conference, you win. A final is equal to an order. So in this concept, everybody wins. You play the final, you just got the order, you have the cooperation. And the relationship going. All is good. However, the principle, the tournament principle is all about which type of match do you actually play? Because if you play the semifinal meaning that you'll have to play another match to get the order. Then you also have a sequence. Then you also have a segmentation. You have a plan for next step. So all of your visitors you can actually kind of see them as someone you play a match with. Whether it is a qualification match or first round, second round, third round. By thinking in that system, by that concept, you are at all times able to think, OK, so how many matches do I have to play still to get the order? And by that you can also define roles and responsibilities, follow-up procedures. Next steps all for you to, with your visitor, with your potential client, win the final in the end. So the tournament principle is all about playing the right match at the right time and understanding which match you play at the trade show floor, so that you don't go for the sale, if you're basically playing the qualification match. I hope this makes sense and please feel free to come up with a better name than the tournament principle or the final terminology. I would appreciate that so much, but I hope this little story made sense because it's very, very good for roles and responsibilities and next steps when at the trade show. So thank you for listening. See you soon. Bye.