Good morning Team!  It’s Friday!

Anyone old enough to get their cholesterol checked has heard the analogy between High Density Lipoproteins (HDL) and Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL).  A doctor will tell you that HDL is similar to a marble and LDL is similar to popcorn so if you took a pipe and put a funnel on top of it, started pouring a combination of the two small but very different substances through it, the marbles pass right through and collect on the bottom (or shoot out from the bottom) and the popcorn takes its sweet-ass time to get through and has a tendency to clump up together and stay toward the top.

Sales prospects are similar to popcorn and marbles.  Some are a definite go and some are still a figment of imagination that might make their way through the sales pipe … someday.  The biggest mistake is to mischaracterize them (either way).

If you tell everyone in your circle of influence that something is a “winner” and it doesn’t materialize, you lose credibility.  Especially when you are too embarrassed to follow up and your audience finds out the bad news from another source.

If you tell everyone something might turn into something “eventually” and it quickly shows up on your doorstep ready to play, you might not be ready.  Still not an ideal situation.

It’s important to perform some triage and call a spade a spade understanding the difference between popcorn and marbles.

Example:  When arguing a point of view, you can address things with facts or conjecture.  The facts pass through the pipe like marbles but the conjecture causes confusion, indigestion and constipation.

As Joe Friday from the TV show Dragnet used to say, “Just the facts, Ma’am”

Have a blessed weekend!