By Brian Bieler   

There may be danger with group thinking; it depends on your goals. Consensus leans towards safety; group thinking may distract you from taking calculated risks. A team might not be able to create a strategy as good as your instincts. While looking at our sales strategies in our company I told my concerns to one of our marketing consultants, E. Karl. We talked about risk taking and playing it safe. He told me a story.

    “Do you know how they make airline lasagna?” E. asked.
    “No,” I said.
    E. said, “It works like this.”

“When you have a lot of money at stake and a lot is riding on decisions, get a bunch of expert opinions. The thinking is, the more opinions, the better. Therefore, the airlines serving lasagna lunches and dinners by the tens of thousands, made sure the people responsible for creating the airline food called in the best chefs to get the best ideas. The goal: make a dish that will taste good to everyone.”

“The airlines use the best of the ideas and came up with great tasting lasagna for everyone. Actually, when you put all the thinking together, you wind up with a lot of compromising. What you come up with is average tasting lasagna that won’t offend anyone,” E. said.

“Airline food is safe food. Not a lot of spices to get anyone upset. It tastes OK, but hardly award winning. If you want great tasting lasagna, you need spices and that means taking some risks. When you spice things up, some people will love the dish even more and some will not like it at all. It is a risk you take. Successful ideas can never please everyone. If you try to please all, you become average.”

When you have too many chefs in the kitchen, group decisions will more often than not come to a safe conclusion. Groupthink may distract you from leading edge thinking; it tends to be conservative and safe while setting high goals usually means taking more risks.

Playing it safe and doing what everyone else is doing may only be a guarantee of average. To perform above average, be prepared to take some risks. If you simply follow the consensus, you may be serving “Airline Lasagna” and losing your edge. Top performing salespeople are most likely not doing what the average sellers do. The winners in sales take risk in stride as it’s part of the sales game.

Sales Principles Dealing With People:

    1. You cannot please all people.
    2. Some people will not like you no matter what you do.
    3. It’s impossible to win 100% of the time.

Don’t let yourself become over-concerned with making mistakes as much as focusing on what it will take to win.  Spice up your unique individual style. Dare to be different and memorable. You’re sales will improve when you serve up exciting spicy presentations.

By Brian Bieler author of The Sales Operator, visit Brian’s website at www.brianbieler.com.