You have 1 hour to find a cure to a rampant disease and escape the building before the zombies eat your lunch. Yikes! During a recent family gathering, we visited the amazing Epic Escape Game in Denver, CO.
The premise is simple: You and your team are locked in a room and have 60 minutes to find clues, solve puzzles, and escape the room.
The execution is not: Teams can be created in any fashion (usually randomly), and thus include a wide range of personality styles, technical skills, experiences, and even other situationally-relevant aspects such as phobias (some rooms are small). And it is for this reason that some of the rooms have a paltry 12-16% success rate.
During the course of the 60-minute countdown, it was fascinating to watch all of these variables in action. Strong personalities initially took point and got things moving, but as the game progressed, every person found unique ways to contribute. By the end, I couldn’t imagine not having such a wide range of ideas and perspectives involved in the game.
For those in sales, this scenario may feel eerily similar. Toss a spectrum of human personas into a room with a prospect and not only escape alive, but deliver a powerful performance and exit with a happy group ready to move forward with your company. Even if you work in a specific geography or business unit, the ever-changing nature of sales teams for specific opportunities demands that a wide variety of individuals come together quickly and seamlessly for a single goal. As I discussed in A K-9 Lesson, it is truly a thing of beauty when it happens.
A Few Thoughts
- Embrace and encourage the unique strengths of each individual on the team
- Not everyone will engage immediately, but when they do, be sure to listen
- A wide-ranging mix of skills provides more value than a few isolated ones
Escaping a room while under the pressure of a clock required a lot of out of the box thinking. Be willing to explore new ideas and concepts for your sales engagements.
Have any escape stories? Continue the discussion and let’s connect. We look forward to the dialog.
For more best practices on Presales techniques, go to http://3DPresales.com.