Why Indecision Assassinates Innovation
All Selling Aside with Alex Mandossian | "Seeding Through Storytelling is the 'New' Selling!"
English - April 23, 2018 07:00 - 25 minutes - 15.3 MB - ★★★★★ - 91 ratingsMarketing Business Entrepreneurship Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Remember Aesop’s fables? These stories were full of political points and lessons for listeners to learn. As you know if you’ve been listening to this podcast, storytelling is central to selling through ethical influence. So, let’s explore one of Aesop’s stories!
Once upon a time, there was a donkey who was starving. To his left, he saw an apple on the ground. To the right, he saw a pear. He looked back and forth between the two. Should he eat the apple? The pear? The apple? The pear? Before he managed to make a decision, he collapsed from hunger and died of starvation, all from his indecisiveness.
The could have tasted the apple and then tasted the pear to see which he liked, instead of trying to permanently choose one or the other. From there, he could have stuck with the second fruit, gone back to the first fruit, eaten one after the other, or even decided to go back and forth between the two fruits, one bite at a time.
This is the sort of thing that happens to us as parents, as children, and as ethical influencers. Your indecisiveness becomes a decision and you surrender your responsibility. The better option is to act small, by figuratively trying a bite each of the apple and pear. In the world of ethical influence, being decisive is the most lucrative skill, even (and sometimes especially) when those decisions are small.
One way to guide your small decisions is to do split-testing each step of the way. As you’ll remember from a previous episode, this is when you test multiple options against each other to see which one to pursue further. Split-testing isn’t just for sales, either. You can use it throughout your life, by finding something that works better and doing that until you find the next thing that works better. Every day, ask yourself, “What am I split-testing today?”
Mistakes are great! The more you make, the smarter you get.
Big innovations come from many micro-decisions.
We make 200 to 300 micro-decisions every day, which can drain your willpower. The most effective way to combat this is by making fewer decisions, which you can do by setting up systems.
is what we do in the ethical influence game.
In This Episode:
[02:02] - Alex talks about the three key insights into becoming an ethical influencer that you’ll learn in this episode.
[02:50] - We hear about the importance of storytelling, specifically in storytelling and ethical influence.
[04:21] - Alex shares Aesop’s donkey fable, and draws out some lessons from the story that are important for ethical influencers.
[06:45] - If the donkey had taken a small bite each of the apple and pear, he would have been able to make one of several decisions.
[08:33] - Great ethical influencers take small steps, dip their toes in the water, and only then decide whether to jump in.
[09:04] - Alex reveals that we make hundreds of decisions every single day, and discusses how we can relieve ourselves of some decision-making.
[11:18] - We learn about breadcrumb navigation toward a sale, as well as the role of split-testing in selling.
[12:46] - Alex gives an example of using split-testing to illustrate how the concept works.
[16:09] - You can use this split-testing technique everywhere, not just in sales. It applies in civic leadership, politics, parenting, spousal support, and just about every other aspect of your life.
[18:22] - We take a moment to look at split-testing as far as it relates to Darwin and the theory of adaptation.
[19:33] - The principle of priority involves knowing the difference between what is important and what is urgent, and doing what is important first.
[21:43] - Alex offers a quick review of some of the insights that he has covered in this episode.
[23:11] - If you haven’t already done so for a previous episode of this podcast, please go to this link and type in your biggest takeaway from this episode as a review!
[24:16] - Alex offers listeners a final gift in honor of this sixth episode: a free copy of his book Alexisms! To learn how to get your free book, tune into the episode.
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