S01E06 – To Sell Is Human

Talking About Marketing Podcast by Steve Davis and David Olney

You can’t just sell to people, you need to build a relationship with them

Not everybody feels comfortable "selling". In fact, most of us feel darn right uncomfortable at the thought of "working someone" so you can get them where you want them.

But, of course, that's all based on a fairly narrow definition of selling; the forced selling of a huckster.

In reality, every time we want to "advocate" for a choice of restaurant or TV show, or recommend a book, or strive to hold attention at a dinner party, that's a form of selling.

David Olney riffs on insights from Daniel Pink's book, To Sell Is Human, in the Principles section of this episode.

For our first segment, however, Steve reflects on the empire of Gladys Sym Choon, a fashion and gift store with a long history in Adelaide. In particular, he reflects on the intuitive (and most likely deliberate) branding activity undertaken by the store's namesake, back when being Chinese in Australia was a fraught situation.

In the mailbag segment, Steve shares a question about domain names and business names and whether the twain should meet.

And for a dose of perspicacity (the sharpening of our minds), David and Steve revisit the bomb of all bombs from the Australian car scene, the mishappen Leyland P76. Yes, a fuel guzzler released at the height of the oil crisis of the 1970s. Could it have been avoided?

We hope you find this helpful.

Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes

02:32  Person  This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.

Embody Your Brand

In 1928, Miss Gladys Sym Choon was the first woman to incorporate a business in South Australia, opening her mini emporium, adjacent to the Adelaide Fruit and Produce Market, at age 16.

Many decades later, Miss Gladys Sym Choon is still a going concern and Steve believes that part of the brand's staying power can be traced back to the way Gladys embodied her brand.

In a lot of the early advertisements for Miss Gladys Sym Choons, Gladys is seen holding Chinese lanterns, or wearing exotic dresses, but in her private photos, she never wore any of those things.

According to Steve, this is a clever way of "living" the brand, whether or not is was deliberate or intuitive.

He discusses this with David Olney in the opening segment.

14:38  Principles  This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.

To Sell Is Human

To Sell Is Human, by Daniel Pink, takes a close look at the art and science of selling, dipping into social science to unearth some counterintuitive insights.

In our discussion, David Olney picks up on Pink's model of Attunement as an importan element of selling.

Attunement means you can’t just sell to people, you need to build a relationship with them, so that you understand what they need/want in future, and what they will say about the brand to other consumers.

This is the entry point into our discussion that will hopefully excite you about selling by finding an authentic, human way to go about it and understand it.

24:56  Problems  This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.

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Steve shared an email from Kylie, who had just started a business and had registered a domain name that matched her rather obscure business name.

When he asked her why she didn't choose a more search-friendly domain name, she said thought domain names had to match business names.

As Steve explains, that is not the case, and they were able to snare a perfect domain name for her fledgling venture.

29:35  Perspicacity  This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case stude from the past.

The Leyland P76

Leyland Australia thought the tagline, "anything but average" was perfect for their muscle car in the early 70s, made to go head-to-head with those big Holdens and Fords.

Only problem was. There as an oil crisis running wild during the production process and the car that boasted you could fit a barrel of oil in the boot, hit the stores just as everybody was clambering for 4 cylinder Japanese cars.

Steve and David discuss the car the lessons we learn from not adapting to changes in the marketplace.

Hop in and learn whether or not this conversation is Super or Standard!

TRANSCRIPT  This is a transcript of the episode. Please note, although checked briefly, this was crafted by an AI tool and will contain errors. For quoting purposes, always check against the original audio.

Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Talking About Marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders, produced by my dad, Steve Davis, and his colleague at Talked About Marketing, David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four P's, person, principles, problems, and perspicacity. Yes, you heard that correctly.

Apart from their love of words, they really love helping people. So they hope this podcast will become a trusted companion on your journey in business.

Steve Davis: David, if you slept over at my house last night and you were waking up and we were having a chat this morning. And I was wanting to offer you some eggs for breakfast. That's a form of me selling the idea, the concept of it, is it [00:01:00] not?

David Olney: I think it probably is, because I'm guessing you wouldn't just say, you know, Would you want an egg?

You'd probably say, My favourite way to have eggs in the morning is X. Would you like them? So you're a scrambled, poached or fried kind of guy.

Steve Davis: See, I'm a poached kind of guy. Except when I'm home. Ah. Because I'm not at all that confident with my poaching, so at home, I fry or scramble.

David Olney: Right, so you're going to probably only suggest the two that you're comfortable doing, so you're still going to be selling to avoid the one that would make you unhappy if it didn't turn out well.

Steve Davis: Yes, and so, this is all about the theme of today, which is to sell as to human, because I realise I do that too when I offer guests coffee, because I only drink short blacks. And I've never used the milk frother on my machine, so when you're at my place, you'll hear me say, right, would you like a short black or a long black?

That's what I offer you. I'm human, David. I'm human.

David Olney: Yeah, and if they want to pour something in, they can pour straight from the carton into that [00:02:00] cup. But again, that's beyond your, your sales task.

Steve Davis: We're going to dive deeper into that later. Right now though, I'm getting ready to slip into something a little more comfortable.

Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one, person. The aim of life is self development. To realise one's nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde.

Steve Davis: Imagine I'm standing here in a shiny, red, silk, full length dress with lovely gold embroidery on it, David. How would you feel?

David Olney: Probably glad to be doing this via internet and being in a different place. That way you can enjoy what you're doing, I can enjoy what I'm doing, but I don't have to work out what it would mean to enjoy doing the two things simultaneously.

Steve Davis: [00:03:00] Yes, well, I mention that because the focus for this first segment about the person is Actually, drawing a little bit of inspiration from the life of Miss Gladys Sim June, a very well known establishment in South Australia. Do you know it actually opened in 1923? Long, wow, long time ago. That's almost a hundred years ago.

I just, my brain just caught up with the passage of time. But I want to raise one aspect of her life with us that I think all of us who own or are in leadership positions within business could learn from. And I'll set it up with a couple of abstract snippets from

About Gladys Sinchun: well, we're very proud of her, my brothers and I, because we didn't realise until we'd more or less left school that what my mother had achieved. They sold [00:04:00] kind of knapery, embroidery, lingerie Chinese handcrafts, porcelains, that kind of thing, and it was very much selling, like, an exotic view of China to the white person in Adelaide.

In lots of the advertising, she's posing with lanterns or she's wearing Chinese dress, and in her private photos at home, she never wears any of those things.

Steve Davis: I'm going to decode what we just heard there. This story this morning is actually, it was triggered by someone referring me to a 2018 exhibition that was on at the Migration Museum in South Australia on Gladys Simchun. Because if we think about it, 1923. That is a time Australia was very young, fledgling, after Federation in 1901, and on the cusp of the white Australia policy coming to the fore.

And here is a Chinese family that [00:05:00] started, they were selling I think fruit and veg in, in one of their stores. And then Gladys Simchun opens up a shop. In which she starts selling interesting Asian articles. So, knickknacks little snippets of clothing things that you can put in your house that add a little bit of intrigue.

And so, what we're talking about here is someone who had an opportunity in this marketplace to bring value by... Providing the exotic, providing something different. So what I remember seeing from some of the research was she would often be going overseas and coming back to, you know, get hold of inventory, but she would take orders from customers who were looking for particular things and she would hunt overseas to see if she could find them.

Okay, so that's a little bit of [00:06:00] a back story there, just as a, as an aside by the way, just how tough it must have been to be a Chinese family in Australia back then. Every time they left to go overseas to come back, they had to apply for special documents to exempt them from a dictation test, which every non European had to do, which meant getting references to write about them getting their fingerprints inked and applied to the form, you know, all these steps every single time just to go in and out of the country.

So that's tough. And anyone here listening within small business world or business itself knows, hey, life is tough. There are little challenges every day. So that was one strand, but here's the crux for today. In a lot of the ads for Miss Gladys Simchun, you would have seen her holding Chinese lanterns, or wearing [00:07:00] exotic dresses.

Okay, that was the image that she cultivated. But, in the private photos, she's never wearing anything like that. And that's what made my ears prick up for us, today, here. To get known. What do you get talked about? Instead of trying to smooth over the quirks that we have, the things that make us different, maybe lying in those little kinks are the very things that make us memorable and intrigue and perhaps tease out some interest from others.

David, would you like to reflect on, on that insight from the perspective of those of us who are trying to get by in this world?

David Olney: I think the, the key thing she seemed to have worked out brilliantly, and that is people were going to see her as different, and if you're gonna be seen as different, make sure you [00:08:00] shape how different you are.

Like she turned being different, being Asian in Australia in a very difficult time to be Asian in Australia, into being glamorous, exotic to making sure that the clothes she wore or the things she held. were beautiful and suggested they'd come from a culture that had a profound sense of how elegant things should be and how well made things should be.

I think she took the decision of, all right, if they're going to see me as the outsider, I'm going to make the outside so appealing that they will want to get closer to it. And in doing that, that'll be good for our family business, but also might change how we're perceived and might make it easier to interact in a world where we are different.

1923, Australia.

Steve Davis: If we think about this just a little bit further, most of us, well firstly, are focused on ourselves and worried about how we're [00:09:00] being perceived, so we don't really see much around us. Secondly, we hold ourselves back. There's something in the social contract that makes you timid, makes most people timid and worried about, oh, how can I break the ice?

I'm not sure I can. The trick here that Gladys Simchun came up with or exemplified was by going that extra mile to be really novel and really beautiful. She heaped fuel on the curiosity part of our inner worlds. that made it impossible not to give into it. We were like in the early bits of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey, where you've got these apes and they see this monolith that's appeared out of nowhere, and gradually they build up the, the confidence to go up to it and touch it.

[00:10:00] And there's a trick here, a dynamic that Gladys M. Tune had that was so intriguing It broke down those things that hurled us back from forging a connection and got us into the world. Do you think there's a bit of mastery there, surely?

David Olney: There's a bit of mastery there, definitely, and I think it works two ways.

For anyone who will admit to their curiosity they've seen something so positive and engaging, why not be curious? And for anyone that is going to reject difference just for the sake of difference, they look like barbarians because what they're rejecting is beauty. And do you want to be the barbarian who rejects beauty?

So if people are going to be, you know, racist pigs in 1923, at least they look overtly like racist pigs, and anyone who's curious helps bridge a gap, and starts maybe beginning the small steps towards multiculturalism that have worked so amazingly in Australia.

Steve Davis: And if we do [00:11:00] fully believe that no human is an island, we do need relationships for our businesses to flourish, for our lives to flourish.

A couple of recollections from the last two weeks I was at different Networking events actually one was a networking event, one was just a social gathering, and on both occasions there were people, there was one gentleman who had this beautiful classic suit with wonderful braces. There was a degree of showmanship about it that made me just Go up and introduce myself and comment on them and the ice was broken instantly.

We, we chatted got on very well. And then at the social event, there was a gentleman with an amazing array of ink, of tattoos, like on his scalp, where he had no hair. He had tattooed, if you like, hair like texture. And I was just... Intrigued by [00:12:00] the difference in pain threshold he would have experienced with that being tattooed versus other parts, and it just compelled me to break the ice, and turns out that there's a lot of future together in him bringing friends to see my friend show, etc, etc.

On both occasions. It is because they had the character, the fortitude, the internal drive to hang their uniqueness out for the world to see, that it meant they were able to attract interest, and that is part of that important thing of, you know, having the door able to be opened, because you're intriguing people to knock.

David Olney: This reminds me of something I read in the Harvard Business Review, maybe 8 or 9 years ago. And it was an interesting thing about how in the corporate world, people dress the same, in the main. And you've got that rare person who wears a suit but doesn't wear a tie, or people who do just something a bit [00:13:00] quirky or a bit different.

And the Harvard Business Review did a heap of research on this, and what they found is that if you've actually got the confidence to be yourself, You can look different to everyone else, and it will be accepted because rather than it being a statement of you being odd, it becomes a statement of you being you.

And the recommendation in the article was, if you don't feel comfortable looking like everyone else, make sure you feel comfortable looking like you. Because it will be well received once people acknowledge, oh, you're doing it deliberately, because that says something about you that you want to share. So I think that's sort of the essence of what we've been talking about in this segment today.

If you've got something about you you want to say, that you think is worth sharing and that people will appreciate, have the confidence to do it because that is more than likely how people will receive it.

Steve Davis: But if you do it... Do it because it's intrinsically part of who you are, so you can do it with confidence and not do it [00:14:00] as a trick that you're not 100% confident in.

That's, that's the key there, isn't it?

David Olney: Absolutely. We're sort of reflecting on something from the previous episode. At the end of the day... Try and be authentic.

Caitlin Davis: R4Ps. Number two. Principles. You can never be overdressed or over educated. Oscar Wilde.

Steve Davis: David Olney, the, the author and speaker, Daniel Pink, has a book called To sell is human, but isn't to love?

David Olney: Well, I think the two things are probably related. In that, if you love something, you wouldn't normally want more of it, or you want other people to appreciate it. The only way to get more of it is to persuade people to let you have more.

The only way to get other people to experience [00:15:00] it is persuade them to come and do things that you think will help them experience more love. So selling is just so central to everything we do. Like, you and I both love good whiskey. How many times have we told people, you should try this, it tastes like this, it's amazing.

We love it and we've tried to, to persuade people they should give it a try too.

Steve Davis: So, is Daniel Pink picking up something that all the ancient scriptures have missed that all those other things are secondary to the intrinsic drive, the motivation to sell as the lingua franca of what it is to interact with others?

David Olney: I'm not sure if everyone missed it, or if he's just been much more upfront about explaining it in a world where, because of modern media, we are so bombarded with adverts in a way that humans weren't before radio and TV. So I think really what he's trying to say is in the post, A [00:16:00] 1945 world where TV and radio become ubiquitous, and then the internet comes along.

That version of sales that is the deliberate ad, yes, we all are probably a bit overwhelmed and tired of that. But the point I think he really wanted to make is, you know, in our days, every day, we're always persuading someone to do something we want them to do, that will make our life better, and that we hope will make their life better.

The persuasion is so central to the human experience. Daniel Pink is a professional author who needs books to sell well. So if he just said, we all spend every day persuading, probably not everyone would have bought the book. But when he calls it, to sell as human, that stopped people dead because to a lot of people, selling is kind of icky and sticky and yuck.

Steve Davis: It is actually. I recall this comes up a lot, especially working with clients who are in allied health [00:17:00] because the practitioners get angsty and if you like almost on a high moral horse Saying I am a medical professional. I am not Going to cross sell other services that we might offer from other professionals because that's below me.

It's impure. But if you actually take a step back, which is what I tend to do with them, it boils down to this. If you're a physio, as part of a broad practice which also includes, who's the person, who's the doctor that looks after your foot? Is that a sciropodist? A podiatrist.

David Olney: A podiatrist, yes. And you might have some exercise physiologists, and you might have a nutritionist, and you might have, you know, some other people.

Yeah, all working together.

Steve Davis: If you are there and you're doing your, your work with them, but you realize there is something [00:18:00] with their gait, there's something the way they're holding their foot, that would benefit from the podiatrist having a look to me. That's not selling in the... Nasty, icky aspect of selling, that's actually giving someone some advice and some guidance to where they could find something that helps them.

David Olney: Yeah, you're helping them solve their problem. You've identified that something's a problem. And rather than just say, I think you've got a problem. And then that's the end of the sentence. You can say, and we have someone here, if you're interested, who could have a look, because I really think that this is something that should be investigated.

Up to you, of course, but let's solve another problem in the next half hour while you're here.

Steve Davis: I wonder if there is a way, because I noticed in. In my work with businesses over the last 20 years, there is a divide. There are some people who would sell sand to people who [00:19:00] live in deserts and love and relish the challenge.

They just love it. Sell, sell, sell. That's what it's all about. And others who are almost embarrassed about moving an agreement. Towards where we have to pay money for this. What's going on? If to sell is human, why do so many humans have trouble selling?

David Olney: Because I think, exactly as you just described, the culture of hard sell.

Basically from World War II until, let's say, about 2005, it really started changing as inbound marketing started to emerge. The idea that you should help solve people's problems rather than push things on people. We're so sick of that idea of the hard sell for one very specific reason. They've just seen a live body and said, we could make you buy our product.

And I think for the people who really can't stand that version of selling, [00:20:00] Daniel Pink's first chapter is very important. This idea that what we all actually do every day is we attune to the people around us. We try and understand them in their own right. We try and communicate with people in ways they understand.

And that when we attune with people, we start going, Hey, this thing I can do for you. Would make your day better, or I really do think it would add value to what you're trying to achieve, or would get you closer to your goals. So for Daniel Pink, I think there's a very big reason he puts attunement right at the beginning of the book, because you aren't just going, oh, warm body, sell at a product.

The first step is to go, who's this person I'm talking to? What are they about? What are they interested in? What do they want to achieve? Do I know how to do, or have access to, anything that will help them get where they want to go? And if I do, well, why not help them? Because if by helping them, they get further down the path they want to go, and I get used to my, get to use my [00:21:00] expertise, and I get to make enough money that I've still got a business tomorrow, but everyone won, where's the problem?

Steve Davis: So, it would follow that if you're not doing any of this at the moment, even taking five minutes to reflect on the other person, to attune to them as best as you can before you engage, would have potential for much greater reward of outcome.

And in that win, win, win scenario, because I reflect back when I was working for someone else selling a wine product and the wine was not one. I knew it filled a niche in the market, but I would never drink it myself. And it was a great. Uphill struggle because I,

David Olney: you couldn't attune with the product or the person you were selling to.

Steve Davis: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I wonder if you are listening to this today, and you do have moments of [00:22:00] vulnerability and feeling that you can't be as persuasive as you should be, is there some internal reflection to. Ignite your own understanding and confidence in the value of your product or service so that you believe it and that it's actually from a place of being good and being helpful that you want others to know about it.

So you're driven by that enthusiasm where you see a good connection that this will fit. A whole or a need that the person or the organization you're about to pitch it to, or discuss it with matches.

David Olney: This taps back into our previous episode, where we were talking about status versus value. How much value are you adding to someone's day by pitching a product toward them?

And if you're not adding value, Why are you [00:23:00] pitching that product? Have you got other products? Could you develop a more valuable product that would be more useful to more people and you would feel more passionate? about putting it in front of people to be considered. It's a big thing to have to realize that maybe actually what you need is a different product, but if that product is higher value and solves more people's problems, you're going to enjoy going to work much more and you're potentially going to be rewarded much more for the work you do.

Steve Davis: So to sum up, to sell is to human. Selling is not a dirty word because we do it all the time. It is about enthusing someone's interest in an outcome or a choice. That, ideally, we believe is best for them, whilst also being good for us.

David Olney: That's a pretty good summary. And to remember that if you don't really understand what someone's about yet [00:24:00] and what they need or want, that's where old fashioned sales of it's a live body sell it a product.

That's what people, you know, feel is an icky thing. Take five minutes to go, Hi! You walked into our store. Do you know specifically yet what you're interested in? Or do you need more information? Or, you know, tell me what made you walk in the door. Let's start from basics and get a level of attunement.

Steve Davis: And then push here, sign hard.

Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number three, Problems. I asked a question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde.

Steve Davis: In this segment this time I'm not actually talking about an email I got, but a conversation that arose between me and Kylie. We were doing a mentoring session and she's on the cusp of starting a [00:25:00] new business. And I'm going to be rather vague, because in new, especially in new business realm, you just want to keep your cards a little close to the chest until you've got all your ducks in a row.

But in essence, this is a perennial thing that pops up from time to time. It's come up also with some people I'm working with in Ceduna. She registered a business name and she found that The business name she really wanted, she had to alter it slightly to get it past that registration. But what she didn't realize, is that your domain name for your website does not have to be a literal match to your business name.

This is a misconception people have out there. And... She was absolutely, well, first of all, the name of her business is one that doesn't work well in search because it happens to match a very famous TV show for kids. So already you've got ambiguity that's going to get in the way. How does poor [00:26:00] old Google sort out that people want your business and not the TV show?

Admittedly, a couple of other qualifying keywords would normally get put in. The job, but it just seemed like it was going to be hard. Anyway, I did a quick Google search with her and checked the main names because the actual name of the product she sells, the, the description, descriptive term of the product was available.

As a domain name and we sat and eyes wide open. I think neither of us spoke for about a minute when she, oh my goodness, she didn't realize that you could register a domain name that described the product or service you were selling in a way that matches closely what someone might go searching for in the first place.

Especially if you're brand new and you haven't built up awareness in the marketplace for people to even be searching for your brand name, it gives you a great head [00:27:00] start if you can own that space in a domain name. So she's got that registered now, and I thought it was just worthy to reflect on the fact that it's not a one to one connection.

You can have... Any domain name available outside of trademarks, of course if they are available, that's the blessing and the curse of the domain name registration system.

David Olney: And I'd just like to add a couple of things to that, and that is Keep in mind you can have a few domain names. So if you've got the ability to get several phrases or words that describe what you do, and you can lock them all down at reasonable price, do it until you get the brand recognition that goes with the company name rather than what the company is going to do.

Steve Davis: Yep. It's a great playing space. And I look at the list of domain names that I own for that very reason, David. And it's not something I tend to share with my wife all that [00:28:00] often. The amount of money that turns hands every year to keep them there, but it satisfies me in the wee small hours of night.

David Olney: I'm sure there's a domain called WeSmallHours.

Steve Davis: Actually, let's just do a quick check right now and see if there is. Because this is exactly the thing... I mean, not that I'm going... Well, will I register? WeSmallHours. Let's have a look. And the answer is... WeSmallHours. com. au is available. Available. And au. But com is taken, so WeSmallHours.Com. Let's see if anyone's doing anything with it. Are they or are they not? The domain is for sale for 1, 995 US dollars. So, someone thinks that's a great idea. What would we do with it though, David? Whiskey club. Alright, when this episode goes to air, we'll come back and check and see [00:29:00] if anyone listening has snaffled it.

Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps, number four, Perspicacity. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.

Steve Davis: Travel all over the countryside, ask the Leylands, ask the Leylands. I apologize for breaking into song without a warning and of course I'm talking about the Leyland P 76, David Oldney, in fact, you were the one who raised this as a topic for us to discuss. I'd never heard of the Leyland P 76, I'm assuming it's some sort of four wheel drive, or am I wrong?

David Olney: No, it was a very, very big car made by Leyland that arrived a few years too late. So it was meant to compete with, you know, the big GT Falcons and, you know, the, the big Monaros and other things from[00:30:00] General Motors Holden. What era? And of early 1970s. And of course it was being tested and prepared for production during the oil crisis.

Steve Davis: Oh.

David Olney: Yes. That doesn't sound good. No. So suddenly, Big Car was released, an original TV ad for Big Car, which you can find on YouTube. They talk about how you can put an oil drum in the boot. Like, who wants to put an oil drum in the boot? Particularly with what that oil drum is going to cost you.

Steve Davis: Let's see if we can hear a little slice of the P 76 advertising.

...

ah, that is... I remember living through the oil crisis. People were very anxious and very worried about there not being enough petrol. So, and that's where all the Japanese four cylinder cars just swarmed the market.

David Olney: Yep, suddenly it was the logical thing to have, not just from build quality, but also from [00:31:00] affordability.

So suddenly perceptions changed literally overnight.

Steve Davis: So how do we understand this? At what point in that process does someone have the courage to say, Hey maybe we should modify these plans?

David Olney: That is this important question is that. People get so committed to their dream, like Leyland had not had a car to compete with, you know, large engined, large sedans in Australia, and it desperately wanted to get in that market.

But that to me suggested, have you done much market research? It's a current market, but look at the state of the world. Where else in the world but Australia did cars like, you know, V8 Falcons and V8 Commodores appeal to a large number of people? Already, by the early 70s, in most of the rest of the world, that segment was collapsing.

So, for [00:32:00] a company like Leyland, that was going through all the chaos of the transformation of the British economy, was within the Australian economy, which was a very small economy, do you really want to build a car for a few hundred thousand people? Is that a good investment of research, development, and production money?

Steve Davis: So what's, what's the equivalent thinking process that's going on here? I, at the time of recording, we're only a month or two out of the Royal Adelaide show that was just held. And the closest I can find to, to capture this thinking by Leyland is... The young child looking at the show bag catalogue and falling in love with a particular show bag that they now want, and they must have.

Going to the show, like waiting, counting down the weeks and days and hours. Finally getting mum and dad to say, okay, it's time now to [00:33:00] go and look at the show bags. And then walking up and seeing the big spread up on the wall of everything in it. And noticing. That the make value of the toys, et cetera, are really crappy, and the size of the lolly bags are much smaller than they thought, but deciding, no, no, I want this, so I'm going to go ahead and buy it anyway.

That, to me, is what Leyland did.

David Olney: They basically had a dream. And looked probably at the very beginning of the development process, but didn't build in the opportunity to go, we should legitimately reassess when we have more data. So this goes back to the idea that, you know, just because when you had your first bit of data, do you think there was a good conclusion?

How can you make a decision only based on the first lot of data? There have to be a few more points along the [00:34:00] way where you can reassess new data and go, we haven't got to the point yet of being so invested we can't stop. What's going to happen if we continue down this path despite the new data? And I think for small business in particular, this is so important because a good idea is a good idea, but can small businesses afford to have all their resources in one new idea, one new product, and not stay adaptive to the market?

Steve Davis: And the other thinking technique here is the one where, in fact, this came up in conversation with a client just recently A red light, hitting a red light is much less expensive at the beginning of a process than if you've invested time and money in it down the track. And we should, as annoying and frustrating as it is sometimes honor and be sensitive to the red light upfront and move on before you've got all the, the sunk costs and the, the opportunity [00:35:00] costs from going too far down a track that was fraught.

David Olney: And that's the other name for this, is the Sunk Cost Fallacy. And that is the more resources you put into something, of course it must be worth continuing. Whereas actually being able to say, no, it's actually time to, you know, stop, burn it down, move on, reallocate resources, reallocate people. Because if we keep going, all we are going to do is build something that will be a museum curiosity.

Rather than a legitimate part of our economic future.

Steve Davis: Hey, and there's some value in being a museum curiosity. Oh, it's awesome!

David Olney: As long as you don't have to get paid for the next 20 years. Exactly.

Steve Davis: Alright, so, did you ever drive in a Leyland P 76?

David Olney: I don't think so. There were so few of them that even as a little kid, you know, having, you know, a dad and an uncle who were into cars and them going, Oh, that's going to end poorly.

Huh, huh, huh. That's the bit I remember. [00:36:00]

Steve Davis: Well, I'm just going to have a quick look to see if there is a Leyland P76 for sale. And yes, they are. You can still buy them. Guess what they go for now?

David Olney: It's going to be horrendous because of rarity.

Steve Davis: 53, 000 for the Leyland P76 Executive and it's huge. So don't only, if you're going to do this, don't only factor in the cost of the car, but also the cost of expanding the width of your carport as well.

They are huge.

David Olney: You can carry the whole family, and the whole family's family, and the cat.

Steve Davis: On that note, let's walk to our next appointment, David O'Neill, it might be the morning.

David Olney: Because we can't afford to drive the P 76, it'll cripple us.

Caitlin Davis: Thank you for listening to Talking About Marketing. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating favourite podcast app.

And if you found it helpful, please share it with others. Steve and [00:37:00] David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to podcast at talkaboutmarketing. com. And finally, the last word to Oscar Wilde, there's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about.

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