Solution Sales
In which we are reminded that a “solution sale” involves all the elements needed to produce a desired outcome.
From the U.S. State Department Website: “Demonstrations are commonplace in Spain…. Prior police approval is required for public demonstrations, and police routinely provide oversight. Nonetheless… Even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and escalate into violence."
Saturday morning, October 19, 2019: In Barcelona, demonstrations had turned violent. City center streets were smoldering from fires lit the night before, littered with trash, broken glass, and overturned barricades. A day of peaceful marching – 500,000 people demonstrating against the Spanish Supreme Court’s decision about jail terms for leaders of the Catalan independence movement – evolved into a night of rioting and pitched battles between police and a few hundred protesters.
314 miles away in Madrid, Friday night had been peaceful and Saturday morning broke cool and sunny. By 10:00 am, the streets leading to the Plaza del Sol were already busy with shoppers; the sidewalk cafes were packed. I’d been out, walking the city for two hours.
Returning from the Plaza del Sol, I cut through Calle de Clavel to turn right on Gran Via to my hotel, just in time to see an ENORMOUS tractor, comparable to the largest Peterbilt tractor you’ve ever seen, roll by slowly followed by what turned out to be thousands of people – families, groups of young and middle-aged men and women, marching and shouting, carrying signs. Another demonstration.
When I reached the hotel front door, I greeted a friend and asked, “What’s going on?”
She said, "Here in Spain, our democracy is relatively new and our ability to protest is something we treasure. These are the police, protesting and demanding equal pay."
Starting and stopping, the marchers passed us at the hotel for about 40 minutes. Finally, the last ranks of protesters passed, followed immediately by half a dozen uniformed police officers in a straight line, the last rank of the demonstration, followed by half a dozen large blue vans, windows blackened, the special weapons and tactics teams… Not clear whether they were part of a protest or there to swing batons if violence erupted.
They were followed immediately by four men with leaf blowers blowing trash from the middle of the street to the gutters. They were followed almost immediately by two street sweepers, one for each gutter, sweeping up the trash.
From the passing of the vans to the passing of the street sweepers took about two minutes… And if you had just arrived on the scene, you would never have known that there had been a several thousand-person demonstration moments before.
This, I thought, would have been a perfect demonstration (ha, ha) of a ‘solution sale’. Can’t you just hear the sales pitch to the police?
“So, we’re gonna start with a big truck, then lotsa people with signs and bullhorns, then you guys in the vans, and then we’ll provide the blowers and street sweepers at the end. You’ll never know we were here.”
The full deal, soup to nuts. In other words, a solution sale.
We left Madrid early the following morning, Sunday, unfortunately missing the next demonstration on the Gran Via… the sheep… Literally... An annual event, started in 1994, that allows shepherds to exercise their right to use traditional routes (going back 600 years) to migrate their livestock from northern Spain to more southerly pastures for winter grazing. Today, the route includes some of Madrid’s most famous streets.
2000 sheep and 100 goats. I wonder how the “solution sales pitch” went for that one!
Nick Miller trains bankers to attract and expand relationships with businesses. Financial advice conversations. More profitable relationships, faster. He is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. Additional articles on Clarity's web site.