Winning, part 2...

Perhaps the most important lesson I learned about winning occurred a long time ago, when a friend and I stayed up half the night playing one of those "war games" that was played using small cardboard counters, a paper map divided into hexagons, and a pair of dice. Such games had something of a following in the days before computers, and I suppose wargaming enthusiasts continue to thrive, but I digress...

I forget the name of the game we played, but recall it involved the German invasion of Russia in June 1941. Rolls of the dice decided how far counters - which represented military units - could move and also decided the outcome of individual engagements. Additional factors affecting the outcome of movement and combat included terrain (tanks don't do well in swamps) as well as position (you wanted to defend from inside a town). The advanced set of rules involved the weather, I recall. We played at the beginner's level.

I got to play the Russian side, and it was pretty painful. The Germans had my Russians outgunned at every juncture. Basically, anything the Germans aimed at was utterly destroyed. (Other outcomes could have involved various levels of "damage" that, in turn, would have affected mobility and firepower.) This occurred because my friend chose to "stack" units on top of one another inside one of the hexagons, which resulted in Russian targets coming under the combined firepower of the units in the hex. My only advantage was a seemingly endless supply of replacements streaming in from the east side of the map.

I soon understood that the Russian side could only hope to survive by not stacking units inside hexagons. Instead, I distributed units as thinly as possible. Since attacks could only be launched against one hexagon at a time, only one unit would be destroyed when it was the German player's turn instead of several. This left the other units, located on adjacent hexagons, to mount a weak counterattack that typically did nothing but chip paint off the German armor.

In the end, my losses were staggering. I was pretty depressed. My opponent had occupied major cities (a defensive plus) and pounded my units into dust. At the end of the game, here he was, with just about all of his units intact, scampering all over the middle of the board. I had lost.

Or so I thought.

You see, each scenario in the game specified "victory conditions." All games have them. In chess, the victory condition is to checkmate the opponent's king. In basketball, and most other team sports, it is to score more points than the other side. In the game we played, we were so eager to get going, we never reviewed these conditions; we just set up the pieces and learned as we went. However, it turned out that the victory condition for the Russian side consisted not in minimizing unit losses, but in preventing any German unit from reaching the east side of the map.

I had, in fact (and inadvertently), won the game.

In a matter of moments, my mood changed from hangdog sourness to elation. (As an aside, it's interesting to note that nothing changed physically... only the information between my ears changed, and that was enough to effect a dramatic mood swing.) The experience taught me a valuable lesson: know in advance what the "victory conditions" are for the game you are playing, either over a board, or in life. (I guess it's another way of saying "you've got to have goals.")

This is what allows people to achieve success ("achieve victory conditions") in different ways. Some accumulate money; others cultivate their spirit. A person may accumulate millions of dollars and not be happy. Another may feel enormous pride in memorizing The Shooting of Dan McGrew. And therein lies a hazard: that of accepting "victory conditions" defined by others.

What are your victory conditions?

Cheers...

Brrr...

Cold calling is a frustrating experience, unless you can weather rejection well.

The conventional wisdom about cold calling is that, statistically, you will make one sale for every x calls. What the number x is will depend on several factors, but all other things being equal, the fact remains that you can expect a sale for every x people you talk to.

If x = 10, then each time a call ends in a no-sale, you are nevertheless 10% of the way toward another sale. If each sale nets you, say, $500, then each rejection is worth $50 to you. That, I am told, is how the pros view cold calling.

Obviously, the smaller the number x, the better off you are. If x = 2, then you'll make 5 sales in 10 calls, on the average. The converse is true, as well. If x = 500 and each sale brings in $500, then each call is worth $1. If you want to make the minimum wage with these numbers, you have to make 6-7 calls per hour over an 8 hour period every day.

The key to making x as low as possible lies in two areas: You've got to ask the right questions, and more important, you must ask them of the right people.

Who are the "right" people? They're people who will buy your product; what sales pros call "qualified prospects." Qualify the right prospects and the questions you ask need not be razor-sharp. Fail to qualify prospects, and be prepared for a lot of rejection, no matter how good your questions are.

So why I am I engaging in this diatribe? Well, obviously, it's because I've been cold calling potential translation customers. I didn't do it all day long, because I again spent time at the shop, but I did get eight calls in. No bites, no nibbles, and two disconnected phone numbers. Ah, well.

The odds are against me, I know that. Most large companies that do business in Russia have their own staff of translators; most smaller companies rely upon their Russian partners for language services. In any event, anyone who has been doing business in Russia is probably set up for the skills I offer. (It's that "probably" that has me calling.)

My best prospect will be someone who has just begun working in Russia and needs a translator now, or someone who is really dissatisfied with the translators currently involved in their project, or someone who has a huge surge of work that will exceed what his staff can handle. It's not that such people don't exist; it's that I've got to find them.

The solution is clear. Either I find them, or they find me. In addition to cold calling, I have to develop more of a Web presence than I have now. I have to do what I can to have my translation site show up in search engine listings. The site I developed for my former employer was pretty successful, all things considered. It brought in at least a half-dozen clients, which is not bad for the paltry investment the company made in the site.

Translation and interpretation aside, I must make a hard charge to develop the store's site. I have a basic skeleton up and running, but I haven't publicized the site yet, and too many pages are still "under construction." The hard part - at least in my mind right now - will be to set up the pages where people can buy things; most of our inventory will be gift items, ranging from scented candles made by some local folks, to Colorado souvenirs (shot glasses, calendars, postcards, etc.), to I-don't-know-what.

It's been a fairly good week, even if there was no translation work and I spent way too much time at the shop. Our revenue is up, due primarily to the tourist traffic, which has started for real now that Memorial Day is behind us. Sunday, my friend Feht has planned an outing at Williams Lake, a reservoir about 25 miles off the main road, in the middle of the San Juan National Forest. He is billing this as a "Marxian picnic," which should be pretty interesting (old Karl may have been a turgid writer, but it is said he did know how to relax, and party! No, not that party, silly!).

Clearly, a signal that it's time to go to bed.

Cheers...