By Milestone|3October 25, 2016

When I was 16 years old, I went against my parents’ advice and pleading to withdraw from the high school wrestling team. Despite the fact that I only weighed about 100 pounds and barely qualified for the lowest weight class, the ego in my head outweighed every ounce of logic around it. As it turns out, my parents were right, and I suffer the agony of that – literally. I had a bad accident during pre-season practice and broke my arm so badly that it needed reconstruction with surgery and 1 year of physical therapy.

At the time, my family didn’t have medical insurance and the fees were skyrocketing high. Because skipping any medical treatment mean lifetime restriction of the usage of my arm. My parents paid for all the medical fees out of pocket – so that their son could regain something he was born with – his left arm.

People are willing to pay a lot for what they loss – whether it is health; an ailing family member, articles and items, or even lost business. In my years of consulting with large corporations; I’ve seen many companies who are complacent with their market share become lost when their business starts to decline. When this situation occurs, they start to scramble for action to regain the business which they have lost. They start to invest more – whether it is hiring people, spending on marketing activity; or just spending more of their workforce’s time and effort to try and regain the lost market share. It’s interesting how a complacent attitude has now become an attitude for change and effort.

This is where we can have the opportunity. For those of us in business development; identifying which of your customers is the subject of losing something can be your newfound opportunity to contribute and assist. At this point, their intention level should be higher to understand your service and offerings. More importantly, this is a time to discuss where the new goals and aspirations are – topics which business leaders prefer. And when the objection comes up as to the expensive cost of your service offering – the counter-question should be “What have you paid so far, for what you’ve lost?”

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