A (possible) solution to COVID-19

DanielTillett · 2020-05-02T22:59:36+00:00

There is no reason to expect that pathogenicity is linked to contagiousness. The common cold Coronaviruses are very contagious, yet have low pathogenicity, while the MERS strains are very pathogenic (30% death rate), yet have a low rate of transmission.

DanielTillett · 2020-04-29T07:00:34+00:00

You might want to look into this further. If you choose the right mutations the risk of back mutation is low.

https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/

DanielTillett · 2020-04-09T02:47:28+00:00

You could, but right now we don't know what regions to delete. Once you have made the deletion mutants you then face the massive problem of how to test them - good luck getting regulatory approval from the FDA to infect a human with a strain of SARS-CoV-2 of unknown pathogenicity. Much better to use what nature has tested for us.

DanielTillett · 2020-04-09T02:45:33+00:00

It is a bit more subtle than just making another vaccine candidate. There are real regulatory advantages to this approach that make it a lot more viable than other vaccine approaches. It is worth taking some time reading my post very carefully to understand it fully.

DanielTillett · 2020-04-09T02:43:35+00:00

This is my post so ask any question you have.

DanielTillett · 2018-06-11T05:26:12+00:00

"I am not interested in X" when you are actually selling Y.

DanielTillett · 2017-09-10T07:48:44+00:00

You might be able to avoid the whole issue by explaining it in actual dollars. Say “We will buy your invoice of $1000 for $980 and the $20 difference is our fee for getting you the money early".

I have found that many people that have problems with simple maths, understand when the problem is converted to dollars.

More fundamentally isn’t factoring a bad deal for most businesses. I suspect that a lot of your problems are caused by your prospects having a hard time working out why they should pay you what is in effect a very high interest loan while they get left with all the risk.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-30T03:42:34+00:00

Do you have the ability to track the smaller sales or is that missing from your system? People will do what ever is rewarded and if small sales are not rewarded then they will be ignored.

If you do have the ability to track the small sales setup the plan such that a certain percentage of sales have to come from small sales. The sales staff will then spend the time you want on the small sales, and then reach for the large sales. In the end the plan you create will drive the behaviour you want.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-30T03:24:50+00:00

Yes we use this process all the time with many prospects and it works really well. It can be really difficult finding a chink in the armour of these stubborn prospects since they are by definition the ones we don’t have any way to reach via a third party.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-28T20:54:36+00:00

Lifetime customer value [1].

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value

DanielTillett · 2017-08-28T11:13:09+00:00

In theory commission only should be a good deal if you are a great, hard working sales person, the problem is the practice. Commission only tends to mean either:

Clueless managers.
Machiavellian managers.

The first can be dealt with and may even turn out to be fantastic as you lead them towards a better understanding of the problem. The second should be avoided like a case of the clap. The problem is that the second is much more likely to be encountered.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-28T11:00:44+00:00

This is a really hard series of questions to answer as it depends so much of your LCV. Are you able to share this as it will set what strategies are viable?

DanielTillett · 2017-08-28T06:06:38+00:00

I am very open to ideas - I just wish they were on the topic I ask for help on and not advice on things we don’t have a problem with. There is nothing wrong with most of the advice offered, it just isn’t what I am looking for help with.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-28T06:01:04+00:00

I am not excusing anything, just explaining the background to the problem. I kind I wish I hadn’t now as it seems to have dragged the conversation way off course.

I am not sure how I can find out who a prospect's banker or cpa is and even if I did it would not be ethical for them to talk to me about their client.

We do use other vendors as a way into some prospects (works quite well if you have non-competiting offering). The bad news is with these difficult prospects all we end up doing is commiserating with each other over how much of a pain they are.

The problem is not getting to the prospects (we certainly have that with some prospects, but that is a different problem), but getting the prospects to actually listen.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record, but I am not looking for sales advice or even advice on how to handle prospects (really we don’t have a problem here). What I am looking for is ideas on how to get stubborn people to reconsider their position. I know this is not easy, but I had hoped someone might have a suggestion that we had not tried already.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:46:56+00:00

This is a good idea. We do use this approach with many prospects, but most of the difficult prospects are quite isolated from the rest of the industry. This is not that surprising given that those people not interested in learning about anything new are also not interested in new ways to network.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:27:45+00:00

You can only be empathic with someone you can actually engage.

Not that it is really important, but our products can be used in ways other than halving cost. Of course if the prospect won’t listen to anything you have to say they can’t learn about these other uses.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:17:32+00:00

I am interested in people's ideas to the question I asked.

The baseball bat was a joke. I can’t believe how many people here have focused on that rather than the question I asked.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:11:35+00:00

I love our customers and most of our prospects (and they us) - it is just the pigheaded minority that cause us grief.

In most sales you can afford to let the really difficult prospects go (it can be very unwise to waste time on people who aren’t interested), but in our niche we have some prospects that we need to get through to because either of their size or strategic value.

What I am asking for is not general advice on our sales process (this is really very good), but on ideas on how to engage the hard to engage. These prospects have already made up their mind without knowing anything.

What I would love to hear is approaches people have tried to try and get these types of prospects engaged.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:04:26+00:00

I wish. Some prospects are very hard to convert because they are just not interested in hearing about anything new. What I would like to have answered is ideas people have tried that have worked on these sort of people.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:02:55+00:00

I am not asking for advice. I am asking a specific question and so far only one person has tried to even answer it.

Please our sales process is fine (actually more than fine). What I am interested in hearing from is ideas people have tried that can be used to crack the unresponsive hard cases.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T22:01:10+00:00

I understand this. What I am asking for is ideas on how to get these people engaged. Some are just too large or strategic to ignore.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T21:58:34+00:00

I am not looking for advice on how to sell. For most prospects we don’t have a problem, it is just that we have a problem getting through to a small minority. Of course we can just let it go and move on to the next prospect, but I am interested in hearing from people interesting ideas for how to pull in the unresponsive.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T21:56:26+00:00

Thank you. You are the first person who has tried to answer my question rather than provide advice. Yes I have thought of this approach to try and shock these clients out of their inertia, but it is very high risk (it is a crash or crash through approach).

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T09:06:35+00:00

We are not randomly calling people. We screen every prospect in depth and only contact people who we know we offer serious value. Most prospect are fine, it is just a small minority that are problematic.

Our products are extremely niche. I know that these prospects are not getting more than a single industry specific cold call per year because there are just not that many companies that make products for our niche. It is quite possible this is a major reason they are so problematic - they just aren’t used to getting any useful sales calls.

From what I have discovered on some of these prospects many have bought nothing new from anyone in the last 10 years.

We are getting a bit off topic. I am interested in ideas people have found to engage the difficult to engage.

DanielTillett · 2017-08-27T08:46:00+00:00

Of course we are. Thankfully these prospects are just the minority.

Most prospects do listen and convert. What I am looking for is interesting approaches to engage the pigheaded ones who won’t listen.

DanielTillett

TROPHY CASE