A few days prior to New Year, along with the rest of the family we paid a visit to the Lego store in Thessaloniki, in order to get a present for Pavlos, my oldest son aged 15, who has been playing with these little bricks since he was a toddler. After a lot of consideration, he made his choice and as a natural consequence, I stood in a long line waiting to reach the cashier and pay.
As I remember, it took me at least fifteen minutes to approach the counter, so during this time I had the chance to start noticing better not only the people standing in front of me, but also those that were inside the store, which was really packed. It was then that I realised that most of the people were not children or youths, but they were mostly adults of all ages, buying Lego products either for themselves or for other adults.
Consequently, I couldn’t help wondering, how did Lego have successfully approached and engaged adult customers? From what I saw in the selves, the way that the store was arranged and bringing in mind their marketing actions and campaigns throughout the years, the answer to my question came almost instantly: They connected with this audience through storytelling and unique experience-making.
Apart from the obvious emphasis on the building experience and the sense of accomplishment that comes from this process, Lego tapped into the childhood memories of the adults and the sense of nostalgia that is associated with the brand. On top of that, they have been releasing special edition and collector’s sets that do appeal to adult “builders”, while at the same time they highlighted the attention to detail in their more complex and sophisticated products, focusing on the intricate design and engineering that goes into them.
Moreover, Lego have partnered with popular franchises like Star Wars, Harry Poter, Marvel and others, creating sets that are linked with beloved stories and characters. This has allowed them to capitalise on the existing fan communities that are associated with these franchises. They even went further making their own movies (The Lego Movie 1&2, The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie), which have generated over $1 billion in worldwide box office revenue that have not only entertained audiences, but also greatly helped to expand their brand.
Lego’s storytelling emphasises the social and communal aspects of their products, as they share stories about adult fans connecting, collaborating, and sharing their Lego creations with one another. They encourage their adult enthusiasts to connect through online groups, fan events, conventions and social media. This fosters a sense of community and belonging among Lego fans.
By weaving compelling narratives around nostalgia, the building process, attention to detail, adult hobbies, popular franchises, product line diversification and fostering community, Lego has successfully expanded its appeal to the adult audience in recent years. In conclusion, Lego’s storytelling helps to forge an emotional connection with this consumer group, which just keeps growing.
Read more: Things that you Notice When you are Waiting to Pay in a LEGO Store
A promise is a commitment or an assurance that something will or will not be done, a declaration that binds it to a particular course of action or inaction. A promise is always future oriented, with the person making it feeling obligated to follow through on what he/she committed to, while the promise recipient expects the person to be reliable and act in accordance with what they stated. When someone makes a promise to another person, a relationship is created between the two, since, if the pledge is fulfilled, it builds trust, establishes credibility, therefore resulting in a valuable connection.
Is there a “Sales Gene?” Are salespeople born rather than made? This debate has been going on for ages and will certainly trouble the Sales community for the years to come. A recent study, though, from Juanjuan Zhang of MIT Sloan School of Management claims that there is a relationship between Sales performance and genetics.
Zhang and his three co-researchers have studied 117 salespeople at a telemarketing company in Asia over the course of thirteen months, where they cross-referenced employee DNA with performance indicators, such as revenue produced and the ability to identify selling opportunities. The research team devised a score that connected the genetic makeup of the salespeople with their phenotypes, which is their observable traits like hair and eye colour, level of education and so on. After comparing the genetic data with the phenotype data, they concluded that the employees with stronger sales performance had similar genetic backgrounds that made them better adaptive learners.
The above study is the latest addition to over twenty-five years of research concerning the individual characteristics that lead to success in Sales. Most of these studies have determined that people with high levels of work pace, assertiveness and resilience, consistently show up in the profiles of top performers when it comes to Sales. Since the above characteristics are developed early in life and are mostly stable over time, they are considered to form a “Sales Gene”.
This discussion has practical implications for organisations, because, if after all, Sales success is determined by innate talent, then the focus of attention should be shifted on attracting and recruiting the right talents for their Sales teams, rather than investing in Sales training.
In my view, Genetics may play a role in contributing to certain personality traits, but Sales performance overall is not determined only from that. I believe that success in Sales is the product of a range of other factors as well, such as learned skills, experience, motivation-inner drive, even environmental and social influences, rather than a single genetic predisposition. If we were to use a sports analogy, we can think of people who have the “Sales Gene”, as having an athleticism that could help them perform at almost any sport, but every top athlete knows that this would not be enough.
With regards to the approach of organisations towards this issue, without a doubt, it is imperative that they identify and select people that possess the right characteristics and mindset. In addition to that, Sales leaders should be continuously helping their salesforce to further develop their natural talents through training and coaching programs that focus on knowledge and technique, and equip them with the right tools that will make their lives easier and will enhance their productivity.
As I find myself, for more than two hours every day, driving to and away from my job, in order to spend this time more productively, I have been listening to audiobooks, most of them related to History. The last one that I heard, though, was “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game”, by Michael Lewis, published in 2003, which in 2011, led to the film “Moneyball”, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.
The book is an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and the attempts of their General Manager Billy Beane to assemble a competitive team on a minimal budget, by using sophisticated analytics to break the game of baseball down into leading key performance indicators and metrics that can predict success, meaning scoring runs and winning games. The key to his approach was to look at the desired outcome and work back from there, using the statistics to getting the best trade-off against this outcome, which was to get the most wins with the least money. Hence, the Oakland Athletics began seeking players who were "undervalued in the market", meaning that they received lower salaries relative to their ability to contribute to winning, as it was measured by these advanced statistics.
Although, I don’t consider myself a baseball fan, I enjoyed the book, and the more I was listening to it, the more I found that the concepts and mindset behind the Moneyball philosophy in baseball, can also be applied to effective Sales strategies and data-driven decision making in Sales.
The central premise of the book was to challenge the collective wisdom of the people that are related to baseball, since it considered it as outdated, subjective and, very often, flawed. For example, it questioned traditional baseball scouting methods and instead proposed the use quantitative analysis. Similarly, sales organisations may need to question long-held assumptions about what makes a good lead or salesperson, and instead use more of the available data to guide their decisions. Just as the Oakland Athletics used statistical analysis to identify undervalued player talent, Sales leaders can use data analytics to identify undervalued lead sources, customer segments or sales strategies that may be overlooked.
Moneyball, as we already explained, is about finding ways to win games more cost-effectively, through the embracement of technology and analytics. In Sales, this could translate to optimising the sales funnel, lead qualification and resource allocation to drive the best return with the assistance of Sales intelligence tools such as CRM data and data-driven forecasting.
One of the key contributors to the success of the Oakland Athletics, was that they defined the right outcome to influence and then, they run simulations of various leading KPIs (predictors), until they found the closest. For Sales Leaders, if our desired outcome is to make the Sales target, then we need to define the right metrics, by running several individual and combination factors of our salespeople behaviours and activities, until we find the closest predictor.
Furthermore, the Oakland Athletics and their GM Billy Beane, were always seeking to gain an edge through constant experimentation, by having a continuous improvement mindset. Sales organisations should take a similar approach, constantly testing and refining their strategies and processes, always based on performance data rather than “gut feeling”.
Without a doubt, most of the traditional performance indicators are valuable and have a role in running sales teams, but the main lesson that I got from Moneyball is that we must look beyond the obvious and to dig deeper into what most people can’t see. Obviously, this requires specialised skills, tools and competencies, and it’s in our best interest to look for and find them. While the specific goals and metrics differ, the Moneyball philosophy of using data to gain competitive advantage can be a powerful framework for rethinking and optimising sales processes and decision-making, to such an extent that may end-up giving us an advantage towards the competition.
On Sunday 9th of June, I was one of the more than sixty thousand people that attended the second consecutive sold-out concert of the British alternative pop-rock band Coldplay in Athens. Coldplay have been present in the world music scene for more than twenty-five years, with many albums and numerous hit songs. They are certainly among my favourite bands, so I was excited when I booked the ticket nearly a year ago and looked forward to seeing them live on stage for the first time.
Read more: Things That I Learned About Sales Leadership at the Coldplay Concert in Athens