This short Youtube short makes a point in an amusing way. Click through to watch …

Ford recently doubled their online marketing budget. In 2006, more cars were sold online than ever before. I sold my MGF online, sight unseen, to a buyer in Brisbane. I was in Melbourne.

I was discussing the role of the salesperson at one of Australia’s biggest BMW dealers last week. They say that more buyers are coming into the showroom with more knowledge about buying cars than ever before. So, do we really need a salesperson?

If a product or service needs no explanation, no demonstration and no special information to support an intelligent buying decision then it needs no salesperson to sell it. That’s why you can buy a book at Amazon. But, I wouldn’t buy a BMW without a salesperson. I need a demonstration. I want to ask questions. I want to be shown options I had never considered. I want to be surprised. For my money, I want and need a salesperson to help me buy BUT NOT TO BULLY ME INTO BUYING or I’ll just walk away. What do you think?

Using ‘X10 thinking’ across the enterprise can be very powerful. For example, in September, 1984, I suggested to General Electric in New York that they take “the road to the BVS”.

What’s a BVS? A BVS is a quantum leap, an order of magnitude (see Universal Brain Software: CVSTOBVS).

It’s the X10 strategy, the deliberate use of the power of TEN. I suggested to Jack Welch and Bob Wright that they ‘multiply the company by TEN’ and gave them a strategy for doing it.

So, GE formally adopted as their theme “the  road to the BVS” and Jack Welch, CEO of GE, enthusiastically embraced my CVSTOBVS strategy.  At that time, in 1984, GE was a $USD30 billion manufacturer. Jack announced, “To maintain a leadership position we need nothing less than a reorientation of our culture away from incrementalism.  We need to shun incremental thinking and go for the quantum leap. We’ve gotta grab, we’ve gotta grope, we’ve gotta reach for the BVS!” 

Jack reached his BVS and left his shareholders a company with a market capitalisation of over $USD300 billion and, as a result, GE’s shareholder value had grown by a power of TEN.