Three Boxes of Condoms

This week, upon returning home from a business trip, I was surprised by an unexpected package on the kitchen table.  A cardboard mailer, measuring 4 inches wide, 6 inches long, and about an inch thick sat there with my name printed on the label.   I assumed it was a book or CD, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember placing an order.

At the time, I was exhausted.  I had just drove 300 miles and thanks to unintentional overdose of MSG at a Chinese place, I was nauseous and breaking more wind than the rear spoiler on a Mustang GT.

When I tore open the box, I was surprised to find three boxes of condoms.

Ribbed.

“For Her Pleasure”.

It seems that the good people at “Relaxus” decided to include me on their latest marketing campaign which was centered on a plain, non-descript mailer containing no letter, no instructions,  just three small boxes, containing three condoms each, a.k.a. a ten year supply in our house.

As if on cue, my wife walked into the room.

She looked at me in my crumpled suit with my weary eyes and pale, sweaty complexion, with the added ambiance of whistle of a fart filling the room and asked “What the Hell?”.

I looked at her, pointed at the printing on one of the boxes and said “I got the ribbed……. you know……for your pleasure”.

Those three boxes will now be able to last me until Nader gets elected.

While condom manufacturers can afford to do a marketing blitz to a large target demographic, if you have an enterprise sales cycle this approach can be extremely counter-productive.

Some years ago I received a call from a recipient of one our Request for Proposal responses. Her polite and professional message was that not only where we not making the cut but we had submitted by far one of the worst responses she had ever read.

And she was right.

Our team was under tremendous pressure to get our numbers up.  Our pipeline was being reviewed every 3 days by all levels of senior management and every call to HQ included “lets go over your deals”.  We figured we would fill up the pipeline with as many deals as possible and surely our revenue would rise.

It didn’t work.

We chased every deal we could find.  If they had a pulse, they were a prospect.

The result was that the resources of our team became overwhelmed and strained almost immediately.

We stopped prepping for demos, there wasn’t enough time.

We answered every RFP that came in the door.  The “worst response ever created” was actually written by myself and my sales engineer between and during three demos, 4 flights, and one mandatory sales meeting.

After losing a good many deals and employees we changed tactics and actually started saying “no”.

We figured out what types of deals we would most likely lose and stopped chasing those.

The quality of our communications with our remaining prospects went up, the number of deals did as well.

So as I sit here and ponder what to do with my condoms, take a quick look at your pipeline.

• Do you have some deals that haven’t moved in two quarters, yet you answered the RFP and done a demo?
• Do you have some who are continuously changing the scope of the project, especially after they see a competitor demo?
• Do you have some prospects that are significantly unlike any of your existing customers?

Even the ribbed condoms are inexpensive, your team’s time is not.