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Is processionary caterpillar syndrome costing you sales?

A few years ago I read an interesting story that illustrated why many of the professionals in the sales and service industry who invest their time and money in my personal phone coaching sessions (http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/personalCoaching.htm) they have until the coaching sessions have failed to go beyond an intellectual understanding of sound selling principles. Do you have processionary caterpillar syndrome?

The renowned French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre, in an experiment with processionary caterpillars, was able to attract them to the edge of a large pot. Processionary caterpillars move through the forest in a long procession feeding on pine needles. They derive their name from their habit of following a lead caterpillar, each with eyes half-closed and head snug against the trailing end of the preceding caterpillar.

Fabre managed to get the lead caterpillar to connect with the last one, creating a complete circle, which moved around the pot in an endless procession. He thought that after a few circles of the pot, the caterpillars would discover their situation or tire of their endless progression and go in another direction. But their movements never varied.

Through force of habit, the caterpillars continued to move restlessly around the pot at roughly the same rate over a period of seven days. They would have continued even longer if they hadn’t stopped out of sheer exhaustion and hunger. As part of the experiment, food had been placed nearby in full view of the group, but because it was out of the way of the circle, they continued their procession towards what might have been their final destruction.

In their procession around the pot, they were blindly following their instincts, habits, past experience, tradition, custom, and prior, the way they had always done things. Actually, they got nowhere. As the adage goes, “It’s a form of insanity to do the same things over and over again and then expect different results.”

Like caterpillars, many sales and service industry professionals confuse daily activity with achievement, working hard with working smart. In my coaching sessions we use self-directed learning manuals and weekly discussions on proven sales techniques and systems to help participants change their behavior and sales activities so they can sell more products or services. To change your sales behavior, you need a plan and program to move to a new level of sales excellence like the system we use to help our customers change their sales activities.

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