Lesson Forty-Seven: Snap the Elastic

I loved that slingshot.

The summer just before I turned twelve, no empty can, tree stump, or wayward fern leaf was safe from its wrath.

I’d scoured the woods for weeks, searched for just the right tree branch that formed a perfect “Y.”Not too brittle, not too weak, and perfectly symmetrical. Some kids I heard of had sent away for mail order slingshots, made of steel and medical rubber. But there was no way my mother would have allowed me to buy one. Plus, that was cheating. A real slingshot should be crafted by the hand that wields it, I thought.

When I found just the right branch I crafted a handle on its base out of tightly wound string, and carved guides into the wood to hold the rubber strips of bicycle tire which I attached to a square patch of leather liberated from an old belt of my father’s.

That slingshot lasted all summer, and shot strong and true.

And now, when I meet with small businesses I wish I still had that slingshot. They could use it.

You see, it taught me an important principle. The farther you pull the elastic back, the harder the rock hits the can. Your prospect is the can, your salesman is the rock, and the way you sell is the slingshot.

When you only pull back a few inches, the rock doesn’t strike the can hard enough to make it move. But if you rear back, that can goes flying.

How sold is your customer before you ask them to buy? 10% of the way? 50% or way? 110% of the way sold?

You pull that elastic by building up a reputation of service and quality; by consistent, repetitious and irresistible advertising; by making a unique and powerful promise to your customer, in a sea of sameness; by finding ways to knock the socks off your existing customers, so that your prospective ones are sold 110% of the way before they’ve even bought.

And when you let go, that rock sales like a bullet and strikes the can dead on.

How can you snap your elastic?