Legend has it… that it was Archimedes who reportedly shouted… Eureka!… such a simple word that boldly portrays so much incandescent behaviour.

I have been reliably informed, and my sources are impeccable, that the eureka moment came while Archimedes was bathing and he suddenly understood that the volume of an irregular object could be calculated by finding the volume of water displaced when the object was submerged in water. Hiero, that feisty tyrant of Syracuse, set Archimedes the problem of finding a solution to determining the purity of gold. He had some old golden crown that he needed to value. It turns out that if one divided the weight of an object by its volume you have a good idea of its density… which seems to have been a good enough indicator of the purity of gold.

So impressed was he, our Archimedes, with his discovery that he shouted out eureka with such emotion that he overdosed on adrenalin… and to get rid of it… he immediately jumped out of the tub and ran naked down the streets of Syracuse!… that was his eureka moment.

Many years later as I have been reliably informed, and my sources are impeccable, that Chris Whyatt also had a ‘eureka’ moment. Now, I’m not sure if he ran down the streets naked, he doesn’t say, but I do know that the… I have found (it)… moment had a profound impact on his understanding of how to put together the best proposal. He shares his insight with us in his latest post… My ‘eueka’ moment; what was yours?… and it is well worth understanding his eureka moment.

Seeing as he was good enough to share his, I thought I would share mine. My ‘eureka’ moment was understanding that binary forecasting delivered far better results than factored forecasting… the reason… it puts the responsibility squarely with the sales rep to close it… they have to close it because it’s forecast to close… unlike factoring where nothing is forecast apart from a percentage of a deal… and how many of you have won 30%, 60%, 90% of a deal… it’s 0% or 100%.

If you forecast it, then you better put a plan together on how you are going to win it… and as Churchill once said…”Those who plan do better than those who do not plan even though they rarely stick to their plan”.

Now, following on from the eureka moment where the intensity of positive emotion can overwhelm you and make you run down the street naked, there is the opposite end of the scale where intensity of negative emotion can often debilitate one so much they can’t do anything… a condition often related to failure. Dealing with failure is as joyful as taking a cold bath on a cold day… not pleasant… and if you do end up having a cold bath it’s your choice… you got in it. It’s the same rationale that Brad Trnavsky talks about in his latest post on… False Assumptions and lack of Ambition… how we make ourselves fail. He shares some great insight and although he does not mention it… his observation about coaching the sales team could be a ‘eureka’ moment!

There we go… two great golden nuggets from the world wide web, both well worth a read.

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