Daily Archives: December 10, 2010

Why You Should Listen to the Great Wil Wheaton

Simply put, Evil Wil Wheaton is the best villain ever.

Now, while I’m not an English Literature major, I am a great researcher and after doing my research on what makes a great villain, and using the web to harness the wisdom of crowds (via the mighty Google), I believe I have a reasonably good understanding of what makes a great villain and why Evil Wil Wheaton, who shows up regularly on Big Bang Theory is the best villain ever.

Simply put, a good villain should be:

  • real
    Evil Wil Wheaton is a regular guy like you and me. He’s not a fictional superhero or a larger than life immortal that we know to be fictional deep down.
  • confident
    Evil Wil Wheaton know’s he’s the man.
  • unyielding
    He never lets up. Year after year he maintains his superiority over Sheldon Lee Cooper, our protagonist on the Big Bang Theory.
  • charismatic and manipulative
    Never has there been a villain more charming. With the exception of our protagonist, every one loves him.
  • self-serving
    He makes up a story about his grandmother to beat the protagonist in a card game in his first appearance.
  • enigmatic and fascinating
    You can see Evil Wil Wheaton shining through in Fawkes, the antagonist to the heroine Codex in The Guild.
  • a hero in his/her own right
    When the protagonist steals the new release of Raiders of the Lost Ark with 21 additional seconds in his third encounter, Evil Wil Wheaton organizes the lynch mob.
  • complex and deep
    You know there’s more to Evil Wil Wheaton than meets the eye.
  • attractive and seductive
    If Evil Wil Wheaton qualified for People’s sexiest man alive list, even though I have no idea what makes a man sexy, I have a suspicion he’d be there.

and, most importantly, he or she should:

  • own the hero’s backside
    When he goes head to head with the protagonist in his second appearance, it’s obvious that he just own’s the hero’s backside.

So what’s the point of all this?

Simply put, you should listen to the words of the one and only Wil Wheaton when he speaks. When he says you should spend more time back in the analog world, even if only for a few hours a day, he couldn’t be closer to the truth. Take Wil’s Word. You’ll be happier for it.

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The Three Secrets of Successful Salespeople

A recent post over on the HBR blogs on the persuasion tactics of effective salespeople did us all a favour by highlight the three fundamental principles, drawn from socio-, psycho-, and neuro-linguistics, that persuasive salespeople use to break down our procurement barriers. By understanding these “heavy hitters”, we can keep our guard up and be more objective in our procurement processes.

  1. They speak in our language.
    Successful salespeople understand that each customer (organization) has a unique language and they take the time to learn that language. This helps them “fit in” and leads us to believe that they must have a better solution, even if all they have is a better means to communicate with us.
  2. They talk about our problems, goals, objectives, and values.
    Whereas most salespeople will spend as much time as you will allow them talking about how great their company is, how great their product is, and how great their service is, successful salespeople talk about how important your problem is, what the best way to solve it is, and the value you will get from the right solution (which, by the way, just happens to be theirs).
  3. They converse with you as if you are a friend
    and not a sucker they are going to take for as much as they can get (even if that is their ultimate goal). They spend time forging a personal connection with you so that you will want to do business with them, regardless of how good their product or service is (which you will already believe in after all of the talk about your problems, goals, objective, and values).

So next time you start feeling too comfortable with a salesperson, step back and objectively judge the situation. What hard data did the salesperson give you? How does it compare with the competition? What level of service will you really get? And should you maybe be conducting (part of) this event through an e-Sourcing platform so you can focus on the relative value of the offerings to insure that you are only spending time in negotiations with providers who can truly solve your problem at a reasonable price point. And while a good relationship with the supplier will often be important to your success, a good relationship alone is not enough if the supplier doesn’t have the products or services you need.