The Elite Salesperson Matrix
Growing up, I played every sport I could —baseball, basketball, swimming, and football. That variety made me a more versatile and, ultimately, a better all-around athlete. But in 8th grade, I stopped growing and struggled to stay competitive in basketball when the other guys kept getting taller. So I dropped basketball to focus on baseball, swimming, and football.
Come 10th grade, I was struggling for playing time on the baseball team because I couldn't hit. The strikeouts and groundouts were piling up, and my batting average was in the tank. The writing was on the wall—I'd reached the limits of my talent in the batter's box. Simultaneously, my swimming career began to wane. I was 5'6" and struggling to compete with other good swimmers who were just as athletic but 6’+. Their length advantage was insurmountable, no matter how much I trained.
But, as my baseball and swimming careers faded, my football career took off. My smaller height, muscular stature, and lightning speed made me a problem for would-be tacklers.
Going into my senior year of high school, I started getting the attention of college football coaches. I was invited to some of the top recruiting camps and combines, and the recruiting letters were arriving in the mail each week. By the end of my final high school football season, I produced over 2,000 yards of offense, scored 15 touchdowns, and led the league in interceptions.
As my athletic career developed, my athleticism becoming more specialized. I started to channel my mix of speed, strength, and agility into not just football-specific but running back-specific training because my best path to a college athletics career would be as a running back.
Maybe Lebron James could have become an elite football player if he’d pursued it over basketball. We’ll never know. He chose basketball (good choice). As you move from amateur to elite talent levels, the athletes become more specialized because the competition gets tougher. Rarely does an athlete reach an elite level of performance in two sports. It's very rare to see talents like Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson.
Sales is the same as athletics.
The skills required to become an elite salesperson in one field differ wildly from those in another
And just because a salesperson struggles to sell one offering, doesn't mean they can't sell or don't have what it takes to be elite at selling something else.
Sales leaders underestimate or ignore this truth, and it hinders their ability to find elite sales talent for their team. You have to stop operating with the mindset that sales is sales. Instead, you have to know what’s required to play your game—to sell your offering.
If you're building a gymnastics team, before you begin recruiting gymnasts, it helps to know the obvious and non-obvious behaviors and characteristics that make an elite-level gymnast, not an elite-level athlete. The talent of the athlete must be translatable to the sport. It's the coach's responsibility to know exactly what talent they need to build an elite team.
One of the reasons that the average tenure of a sales rep is about 18 months is because, at some point after onboarding and training (about 3-4 months into the role), either the leader, the rep, or both realize that the salesperson's talents don't align with what's required for success in the role.
The four types of salespeople
I've seen just about every role you can create in a sales organization, and even though no two sales positions are the same—they all fit into one of four possible categories. As you interview sales talent, you need to know the four types of salespeople, and the nature of your sales process determines the type of salesperson required to excel in your organization.
The Expert
This salesperson sells a consultative, need-to-have product. An example might be a customized CRM like Salesforce for a large, enterprise sales team. It’s not off the rack. You can purchase Pipedrive on their website through their ‘Buy Now’ button. You can’t with Salesforce because the value of the software is harnessed by building it around your business needs—the options are endless.
Expert salespeople must work with and through others. An intuitive, refined understanding of team cohesion, dynamics, and interpersonal relations is required
Buyers of a consultative need-to-have offering purchase by committee. Salespeople should expect multiple stakeholders in the purchasing decision and to excel a salesperson needs to understand:
Who are all of the users?
Who represents the users?
Who is responsible for the financial implications?
Which non-users will be affected by the decision to buy or not buy?
How does the purchasing decision fit into a larger strategic plan?
You have to understand the buyer’s situation—the interpersonal dynamics, the politics, the risks, who's on the fence, who can influence others who aren't yet seeing what the product could do for them and their function. You've got to know how to navigate this group of people.
Then, internally, you've got to work well with the team of builders, the makers, and the implementers, who must take what you're pulling from the customer and go build it around the customer's requirements. You've got to be able to ask for resources internally, compete with other projects, and navigate delivery teams.
Experts need a strong sense of urgency, initiative, and competitive drive to get things done, with an emphasis on working with and through people in the process. They must understand people well and use that understanding effectively in influencing and persuading others to act.
The reason why urgency and initiative are more important in a need-to-have versus a nice-to-have is there are usually constraints that have to be navigated. The customer knows they need it, so they're likely on a self-imposed deadline to make a purchasing decision. Since they know they need it, the initiative is required to push your internal team for certain functions and concessions that will be necessary to ink the deal.
A strong sense of competition is required in an Expert because they almost always sell in a competitive situation. Since the customer knows they need a solution, they interview multiple solution providers. Experts are always selling against competitive offerings that, on paper, are just as good as your offering, and you must know how to position your offering to be more competitive. Sometimes the purchasing decisions come down to the expertise of the seller vs. the features and benefits of the offering.
Must enthusiastically persuade and motivate others by considering their point of view and adjusting delivery. Expert salespeople view the customer as an expert too.
The reasons for buying a transactional **need-to-have are generally the same for all buyers. I need a roof, I need windows, I need this product for obvious reasons. That's not the case in a consultative need-to-have. With a consultative need-to-have, expect the customer to define the scope of the offering.
If the customer can't define the scope, then the salesperson must have the skills to guide the prospect in a process of collaborating on a scope that works for them. In collaborative selling situations, an interesting dynamic exists. Yes, the salesperson needs a deep level of expertise to succeed, but the salesperson isn't the only expert. The customer is usually an expert too.
Most often, the buyer(s) know a lot about your offering and your competitor's offerings, and they know more than you might expect on the subjects adjacent to your offering. They (the customer) are also an expert on their problem, which is why they believe they need a solution.
The motivation to purchase should not be assumed but instead pulled from that committee of buyers. Only the customer is an expert on the problems in their situation. So, any motivation they already have to use our offering is stronger than any motivation I can give them. It's the salesperson's job to find why they're motivated versus trying to convince them of a motivation.
Impatient for results and particularly impatient with internal details and routines.
Even though there might be a self-imposed time commitment, multiple steps exist and multiple buyers will need to be convinced. A sales process exists, but it may not be the same in each buying scenario.
Generally, the customer has a loud voice in the buying process for a consultative, need-to-have offering. So we have to move in an orchestrated manner, pulling along the customer and internal stakeholders. Salespeople have to communicate and seek alignment on the next step in the buying process. Typically your impatience for results (on behalf of the customer) and your particular impatience with details and routines (created by internal stakeholders) will build the buyer’s confidence in your own professional knowledge.
When a salesperson masters this unique sense of impatience, the customer views them as an extension of their team—not a vendor trying to force them to “buy now”.
Now, in the transactional selling environment, there's a defined way that the offering is bought for the most part. The customer knows it, the selling team knows it, and there's an understood, sometimes unspoken step-wise buying process.
But in a consultative need-to-have, if you’re wired to sell in a step-wise way, you might lose opportunities because you want to stick to a routine versus being agile, flexible, and able to get the deal done. In the consultative, customers want to do it their way, so you have to do it their way, not your way.
You must be technically oriented. Having confidence in your own professional knowledge and ability to get things done quickly and correctly.
You're selling to someone who, at a minimum, views themselves as an expert on your offering category and, more likely, sees themselves as an expert on your product. They may know more about the problems and how the tool should solve them than you do. You're selling to a group of technical users.
I'll give you an example. If you were an Account Executive at Salesforce.com tasked with selling CRM solutions to a sales leader and you don't have a strong technical understanding of selling process stages and the basic reports that a sales leader needs to do their job, you will not get the deal done. Your prospective buyer (the sales leader) will never understand that salesforce.com is the best solution for them because you can’t communicate an expert-level understanding of the problems the prospect needs the CRM to solve.
You have to be able to intellectually spar with your customers. They have to view you as an equal. If you don't have confidence in your expertise, you will fail in this selling environment.
If you aren’t yet an expert, you must quickly develop a high level of expertise.
I may be able to interview a candidate who has never sold this specific piece of technology, but I recruited them because they already had the attention of the buyer I need for my offering. They currently sell my ideal customer something else, and they would not have succeeded without being strong, technically oriented, and confident in their technical ability and knowledge.
I don't have to train them on the offering because they will train themselves. They're self-motivated. They know how to sell. They don't know my offering yet, but they'll figure it out.
Expert Salespeople dedicate time to learning how to think like their customer. They read the same publications that capture their customers' attention and go to the same conferences, not only to network but to learn alongside their customers. Go strike up a human anatomy conversation with one of your friends who sells a medical device, and come back to me and tell me they don't talk like a surgeon.
The Visionary
This salesperson sells a consultative, nice-to-have product. I'll use one of my own offerings as an example. Coaching for sales leaders. It's consultative and customized for every engagement, but for many of my clients, it's a nice-to-have. Most CEOs believe their sales leader has all the answers so "why do they need an expensive coach?". While this type of selling (nice-to-have executive coaching) requires deep expertise like the Expert, selling a nice-to-have requires additional skills that the Expert doesn't need.
Problem solver, able to see the bigger picture, innovative.
In a consultative need-to-have selling environment, the customer knows the problem and the consequences of not taking action. When it's a nice-to-have offering, the problem may not be as obvious. They may be trying to solve a symptom of an even bigger problem they don't even know they have. Remember, this is a nice-to-have, so they don't have to do anything. If you don't dig in and understand the other contributing factors and more subtle dynamics of the problem(s), you might miss something that's not as obvious but could derail their decision to do something.
I'll give you another example of this: My friends Ryan and Richard created Scalable.co a company that helps 7-8-figure entrepreneurs create operating systems to can scale their business without sacrificing their souls. One of their offerings is Founders Board, an invitation-only mentorship and peer advisory mastermind program. CEOs are drawn to the offering because it helps them “hit their number” and achieve their “ideal exit.”
Countless examples exist of Founders Board members who have tripled (or better) their earnings or had wildly successful financial exits. The content is best-in-class. The access to experts and other smart, successful entrepreneurs is second to none. But you don’t need the Founders Board to systematize your business and create your ideal exit. Most entrepreneurs who build a successful company won’t ever use Founders Board.
When selling memberships to Founders Board, the conversation with a prospective entrepreneur is always about the bigger picture and “what could be possible,” which is the essence of innovation. The bigger picture for their customer is “just because you don’t need this, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have it.” Entrepreneurs can build their business the hard way or the smart way.
The bigger picture is that every business owner's problem has already been experienced and solved by another entrepreneur. Business is a brutal teacher—it gives you the test before it gives you the answer. So you can either struggle to find the answer on your own or have a resource like Founders Board that can quickly give you the answer to most of the problems you will face in business. The salesperson's job is to be innovative in their approach to help the customer see what could be possible if they always had the answers to the problems in their business.
Assertiveness: Not afraid to ask hard questions or point out forward thinking.
Helping the customer see the bigger picture is only part of the required skills. The customer might get to this place where they say, all right Nigel, I get it. I can see how this could help us—we see the bigger picture. But to spend $50,000 on it, it just doesn't make sense (in their mind). If you stop there and assume the customer's not interested, you will struggle to sell that offering because that's what most customers will tell you. So you've got to ask questions around, "Well, what if you don't do this?”
Since most of my work is in this quadrant, I often encounter CEOs who say, "Nigel, what if I spend $40,000 this year for you to coach my sales leader and they get really good at the job and then they leave." It's a real risk for them to level up a key employee only for them to take what they've learned on the dime of their current employer and leave to go to another company.
My reply is, "It's a risk. I could upskill them so much that they go somewhere else. But what if you don't provide your sales leader with coaching, and they stay? What does your business look like in that scenario?”
It’s a hard question for the CEO to consider. If I don’t ask it, the answer to buying sales leadership coaching is likely a “no.”
Openly challenges the world. Aggressive when challenged.
Sometimes in the nice-to-have quadrant, the salesperson needs to possess a desire to be bold, be convinced of a new, innovative approach, and be willing to go out and say that everybody's wrong.
“You've all got it wrong!”
The world is seeing it the wrong way, and that's why you, the customer, view this as a nice-to-have instead of a need-to-have. The Visionary is good at and enjoys debate and discourse. When you can move the perception of your offering from nice-to-have to need-to-have, your chances of closing the deal increase. Expect pushback from most of your prospects, and meet it with an aggressive posture. This salesperson must be capable of defending the value of the offering because nice-to-have offerings are most likely to experience value and price erosion. The wrong type of salesperson will try to sell by reducing the price to get the deal done—devaluing the product to the level the customer sees it. It's not sustainable.
Can react and adjust quickly to changing conditions and develop ideas for dealing with them.
A change in conditions is more prevalent in a nice-to-have than a need-to-have. In a nice-to-have, there are more reasons not to do it than there are reasons to do it. I once had a sales leadership coaching prospect who was very eager to work with me. He saw the value and was prepared to pay for coaching out of his pocket.
But when it came time to execute the agreement, something came up that he wasn’t anticipating. His accountant informed him of a big tax bill that he’d have to pay in a few months time. So, in his mind, he can spend $40,000+ with Nigel or save that money for this tax bill. That’s a new challenge that has come up in the buying cycle.
If coaching was a need-to-have, he’d have just figure it out.
The job of the Visionary is to help the customer navigate their relationship with uncertainty in their future. It's helping them clearly see the opportunity cost of not doing it so they can decide to regress to their existing level of comfort or be different.
And generally, you are selling against apathy, the decision to do nothing. I never lose business to a competitor. I lose business because the customer decided to go solve another problem.
Instead of offering a discount to this would-be coaching client, I let him decide to pay his tax bill, and I onboarded another prospect into my coaching program. The deal isn’t lost, it's just not happening now. I can’t let my business goals be adversely affected by a prospective client's situation. I had to quickly detach from the opportunity and move to the next one.
Must have a higher level of expertise and be viewed as an expert by the customer.
The expertise required of the Visionary is different from the expertise that needs to be developed over time by the Expert. The Expert needs to develop expertise in their offering category. Visionaries need a broader and deeper level of expertise that expands beyond the offering sold. They need their 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book Outliers. That's exactly why my business will never allow me to scale with junior team members 'doing' the work. I'm the product. They're buying my expertise in solving their problems.
I'll give you a real example: I am a part owner of a software company called Affirm Health. The software aims to maximize a primary care physician's time and billable events during a patient encounter. Primary care providers are finding it harder and harder to earn a decent living that makes all the painful years of med school worth it.
I'm very good at selling a nice-to-have. But, I quickly learned that in every selling instance at Affirm Health, I was selling to practice managers who had been trained to manage primary care physicians, or I was selling to an actual primary care physician. I've never managed a primary care practice, and I don't know much (anything really) about being a primary care doctor. So when I tell them about certain billable events and how payers think about it, it doesn't hold credibility with the customer. The customer was like, wait a minute, you've never been a primary care doctor, what the hell are you talking about?
So, we had to hire a primary care doctor and bring him into these meetings. Everybody leaned in when we started bringing equal or advanced expertise into the meetings. I did not have time to develop expertise—the business needed customers now. Having a Visionary with 10,000 under his belt in the selling conversation was a game changer.
The Killer
Where the Expert in the consultative need-to-have quadrant sold custom offerings (salesforce.com, a customizable CRM as an example), the transactional need-to-have sells off-the-shelf solutions. In the software category that could be Pipedrive or Quickbooks, elsewhere it looks like cars and homeowners insurance.
Proactivity, methodical, and a sense of urgency in driving to reach goals.
Consultative sellers need to be impatient for results and impatient with details and routine because there are generally a finite number of buyers, and the buyer has decided to buy now. Experts can't afford to lose someone that's interested now because we (the company) want to sell it in a way the customer is not prepared to buy.
The difference between a Killer’s sense of urgency vs. an Expert’s is the salesperson’s understanding of, “Some will buy, some won't buy, so what?” They’re not going to spend too much time with a prospect.
The mindset is: “Here's the value, here's what it costs. If you're not going to do it, I’ve got a long list of other people that I need to get to today that will. Come back to me when you change your mind. Or, go buy it from someone else, but I don't have time for that. I've got goals to hit. I got a long list of potential deals that I need to work through, I'm on to the next.”
They have an abundance mindset because the total addressable market for their offering is large, and it's a numbers game. They work a methodical, predictable process. If they stick to the program, the sales results will follow.
Persuades and motivates others by adjusting the message and delivery to the current recipient.
In this category of offering, there's no significant difference between competitors. So I, the customer, am going to buy from the person I like. And I'm going to like the person that mirrors me, or gets me to like them—so it's really important to be liked. Car insurance is car insurance. Once I know I have a fair price, I buy the insurance from the rep I like the most. Take my money and leave me alone. Make the process easy.
Oftentimes, this offering category has a salesperson, but it could probably get away with a strong, educational, and informative website with a “buy now button”. The customer has to talk to a seller to complete the transaction, for several nuanced, offering-specific reasons, but If I could just go buy it, and never talk to a salesperson, I would. But for some reason (sometimes good reasons), I have to talk to someone before I make the transaction.
The Killers that thrive in this quadrant are chameleons—they shape-shift to be whatever the buyer needs.
Strong sense of initiative, resourcefulness, and competitive drive to get things done.
If there's money on the other side of the wall, the Killer is doing whatever it takes to break through that wall. Stay here all night if she needs to. Got to make a hundred calls? She makes a hundred calls. If it means she needs to work longer and make more dials, she doesn't leave until the work is done, and no one has to tell her to do it. She just knows what she needs to do. She's open to working in different ways if it means hitting her targets. "I may have to use AI or be more efficient in how I manage my time." That is the kind of resourcefulness I'm talking about here.
More comfortable in a defined stepwise selling process. Careful with rules, precise, by the book, fast-paced, and literal in interpreting rules, schedules, and results.
It's not that these salespeople don't want to think for themselves. They thought for themselves and realized that "by the book" was the best way. It's like, "Hey prospective customer, look, it costs $6,000 and I can't give you a discount. It just costs $6,000. If you can find a better price somewhere else, you should take it. So, either buy it or don't. I'm by the books I can't give you a discount. Sorry. Got to move on." That's the fast pace they work at.
The Killer doesn't wing the sales process. If the sales process involves a virtual demo or a product presentation, they rehearse it like a Broadway actor memorizes lines. They have the pitch down cold—there's no question or objection they can't handle.
A word of advice to the Killers
If you find yourself in a situation where you're selling a need-to-have transactional offering, know that this category is most at risk of being eliminated by technology. Real Estate agents are losing to Zillow Realtor.com, Carvana and other online car marketplaces are eliminating the need of car salespeople.
Gartner data says that customers don't want to talk to a salesperson and prefer a digital buying experience. In the need-to-have transactional quadrant, almost 100% of buyers don't want to talk to a salesperson. I know I don't. I want a "buy now" button.
My advice to sales leaders in this quadrant is to find ways to use technology to reduce and hopefully eliminate the need to talk to a salesperson and your sales will likely increase (your cost of sale will go down too). If you sell in this quadrant, get the required skills to sell in a different quadrant. It's ok to be here now, but you can't sell here forever.
The Connector
I make a lot of personal buying decisions in this quadrant, and I suspect you might do too. I surf. I don't need custom surfboards, but that's all I ride. I only ride boards shaped by Mike Whisnant. My shaper, Mike, is a great surfer and a world-class shaper. He doesn't know it, but he's a good salesperson too. I recently asked Mike to shape me a new board—the third one he's shaped for me this year. I called him up and said, "Mike, I really want to have this 7'7" board shaped. I just saw something similar, and it piqued my curiosity." I asked him point blank, "Do I need this board?" He said, "Well, You don't need it. You don't not need it." I was like, "Yeah you're right, I don't need it but let's go for it." He has never tried to convince me to buy a certain board or pressured me for any type of upgrade.
I pay a premium for boards that are made specifically for me, and each is a 1-of-1 with unique nice-to-haves that you could argue I don't "need". I could buy one off the rack at the local surf shop. Countless websites would sell me just about any board I could want. I'd probably be fine for the rest of my life, and I can point you to numerous surfers who can surf circles around me, all riding off-the-rack surfboards.
Mike took the time to watch me surf and ask me about what I wanted from surfing, not just a board. Like the Expert and the Visionary, he has deep levels of expertise. It oozes from his pores. He knows "me" and what I value. He makes a point to "connect" with all of his customers. He isn't just selling me a surfboard. The transaction meets more than just a surface-level need for me. Being Mike's client has taught me about surf history, local knowledge, and surfboard science, and it has challenged me to think about my own surfing style. I feel more connected to surfing, my community, and my goals and that (for me) is priceless. I'm paying for an experience and an education, not a piece of foam.
As a result, I will never ask for or accept a discount from Mike. I will always pay full price because I know I'm still getting more value from the exchange than can be written on a receipt.
In B2B selling, a nice-to-have transaction could be paying a famous keynote speaker for your company meeting. You don’t need this purchase. You could play a YouTube video of the speaker and get the same content. Content isn’t why we pay keynote speakers.
Proactively connects quickly to others. Open and sharing.
Do you really need Gary Vaynerchuk to come and speak to your team? Or could this be excessive or opulence?" Spending $100,000 on a speaker, a lot of people will think that's ridiculous. But, the elite Connector recognizes that a deeper need or reason exists. He'll get curious to uncover the real reason why the customer wants to invest in a notable keynote speaker.
After some discovery, he might uncover that the customer values relevancy and will tell the buyer, "But look at your team. If there were a company that would have Gary come in, it'd be you guys. I mean, look at what you're up to. You're the kind of leader that would do something like this." As a seller in this quadrant, you must connect and find out the deeper, hidden reason to buy this nice-to-have offering. They recognize the tension the buyer is holding between, "I don't really need this and I so desperately want to be seen as relevant. Then, the salesperson shares examples where other customers who wanted the same sense of relevancy could experience relevancy after booking an expensive keynote speaker. The salesperson isn't trying to convince you to buy anything. But they connect and know "you" and remind you of the reasons why you would do this that won't make sense to everyone else. They then share "success" stories of other buyers, who you would find credible, and let you decide for yourself.
Since this is a transactional, non-consultative offer, the keynote speakers mostly deliver scripted and rehearsed keynotes—there's not much room for tailoring the message to your team. You're not going to get to change what they say. Gary Vaynerchuk is going to say what Gary's going to say. He's not building a talk around you. The seller can share with the buyer examples of Gary on the stage, share testimonials of happy customers who paid for Gary to speak, and let the prospective buyer get closer to deciding to buy or not.
Builds and leverages relationships to get work done.
Nested in the skillset of "sharing" is a unique ability to leverage existing and past customers to get current deals over the finish line. The buyer might be on the fence and feel like the salesperson is trying to "sell them." Good Connectors recognize this dynamic and remove themselves from the customer's decision-making process. They might say something like, "Look, prospective customer, yes, I will make a commission if you get Gary Vaynerchuk to come speak. Certainly, I stand to gain from that. I still think you stand to gain more, and it's not my job to convince or persuade you. So why don't you call Michael (happy customer) who just had Gary come speak to his team and let Michael tell you what it was like." This is where the salesperson is leveraging relationships to get the work done.
This is the quadrant where companies will overwhelm prospective customers with logos and testimonials. 'Don't take my word for it, take someone else's word for it.' The reason testimonials are more important here than in the consultative nice-to-have quadrant is that generally, for transactional nice-to-have, the prospect can't get a peek at the offering during the buying process.
In the consultative quadrant, part of the offering is the expertise of the provider during the discovery process. The Connector salesperson may be unable to offer a "test drive" of the offering, so they point prospective buyers to happy customers.
Can find the problem behind the problem.
While I was the CEO of StoryBrand, the founder, Donald Miller wrote the best-selling book Building a StoryBrand. In the book, Miller lays out a framework that teaches the reader that the customer's problem is never really the problem. Let's use the movie Money Ball as an example. Billy Beane's problem wasn't just that he had less budget to go build a team and compete with the Boston Red Sox. That was the external, surface-level problem. The problem behind the problem is that Billy Beane was supposed to be a superstar baseball player, but he failed. He was the opposite of all of the guys he needed to go find. Internally, Billy struggled with the reality that past success doesn't always translate to future results.
Then there's this philosophical problem that Billy Bean was struggling with: it shouldn't be the case that the best baseball teams are the best baseball teams just because they have more money. That is an injustice to the sport.
If you're selling in this quadrant, you've got to figure out what's the problem behind the problem for the buyer. Why does the buyer really want Gary Vaynerchuk to speak to her team?
Regardless of the customer's motivation, it's not the salesperson's responsibility to judge the reason. Just find it - why do they really want to do it? The seller here is not going to challenge the buyer on why they're having doubts about spending $200,000 to have Gary come speak at their team meeting. That's going to kill the deal. Because in the customer's mind, the consequences in the transactional versus the consultative are less. The stakes aren't as high.
"So what? You don't hire Gary Vee, you'll be fine." But the problem behind the problem is generally some form of ego or fear. It's a threat to your identity.
The problem behind the problem could be that the leader who's thinking about bringing in Gary Vee is losing the team. There's a risk that their credibility and the leader needs an injection of something different, a new voice, a new perspective to help pull the team along where the team needs to go. They're not taking my word for it, but they all listen to Gary. So let's get Gary to come in and talk about it.
Sells the vision for life without the problem.
Sound familiar? This whole quadrant speaks to best-in-class copywriting. It's where Dan Kennedy and Ray Edwards make a living. It's selling from the stage. It's what Tony Robbins does. They poke at pain, paint a picture of where the buyer is now, detail all the failed attempts at solving the problem, lay out why their alternative solution works, and then sell the vision for life without the problem. They use words to paint a picture of your future without the problem, and the future looks damn fine.
