The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

by Michael E. Gerber

There are three kinds of systems in your business: Hard Systems, Soft Systems, and Information Systems.

Hard Systems are inanimate, unliving things. My computer is a Hard System, as are the colors in this office’s reception area. Soft Systems are either animate—living—or ideas. You are a Soft System; so is the script for Hamlet. Information Systems are those that provide us with information about the interaction between the other two. Inventory control, cash flow forecasting, and sales activity summary reports are all Information Systems. The Innovation, Quantification, Orchestration, and integration of these three kinds of systems in your business is what your Business Development Program is all about. What follows are examples of each, and how they integrate to produce a desirable result.

we had a conflict between what we wanted and what we had. The two necessary components of conflict. The essential conditions for innovation. The conditions that give birth to a system.

The 20 percent are using a system, and the 80 percent aren’t. A selling system is a Soft System.

It’s a fully orchestrated interaction between you and your customer that follows six primary steps:

1. Identification of the specific Benchmarks—or consumer decision points—in your selling process. 2. The literal scripting of the words that will get you to each one successfully (yes, written down like the script for a play!). 3. The creation of the various materials to be used with each script. 4. The memorization of each Benchmark’s script. 5. The delivery of each script by your salespeople in identical fashion.

6. Leaving your people to communicate more effectively, by articulating, watching, listening, hearing, acknowledging, understanding, and engaging each and...

Structure and Substance. Structure is what you do. Substance is how you do it.

The Structure of the System is all of the predetermined elements of the Process, and includes exactly what you say, the materials you use when you say it, and what you wear. The Substance of the System is what you—the salesperson—bring to the Process, and includes how you say it, how you use it when you say it, and how you are when you say it.

The Power Point Selling Process is actually a series of scripts defining the entire interaction between the salesperson and the customer.

1. The Appointment Presentation 2. The Needs Analysis Presentation 3. The Solutions Presentation

The purpose of an Appointment Presentation is one thing and one thing only: to make an appointment. The Appointment Presentation moves the prospect from where he is to the second Benchmark in the process, the Needs Analysis Presentation.

engage the prospect’s unconscious (remember?) by speaking primarily about the product you have to sell rather than the commodity.

Simple and effective. It makes appointments. To do what? To deliver the Needs Analysis Presentation.

The first thing you do in a Needs Analysis Presentation is repeat what you said in the Appointment Presentation to reestablish the emotional commitment:

The second thing you do is tell the prospect how you would like to proceed to fulfill your promise to him:

The third thing you do is to establish your credibility in the prospect’s mind by communicating two things. First, your company’s expertise is such matters:

And second, your personal willingness to do whatever is necessary to utilize that expertise on his behalf:

The fourth thing you do in a Needs Analysis Presentation is describe the Walter Mitty Company’s Money-Controlling System

and why it works so well. Not what it does but the impact it will have on the prospect:

The fifth thing Johnny Jones does in the Needs Analysis Presentation is complete the Money Management Questionnaire. The sixth thing Johnny Jones does is provide the prospective customer with the information he promised and show him how relevant it is to the Financial Report he will be preparing for him.

The seventh thing Johnny Jones does in the Needs Analysis Presentation is make an appointment with the prospective customer to return with the Financial Report, reminding him that Johnny Jones will have some valuable solutions for him—at no cost!—and that Johnny will take whatever time is necessary to help the prospective customer understand those solutions, whether he decides to implement them or not!

Most salespeople think that selling is “closing.” It isn’t. Selling is opening. That’s what the Needs Analysis Presentation does. It opens up the prospective customer to a deeper experience of his frustration and to the opportunities available to him by going through the questioning process with you.

The Solutions Presentation simply provides the rational armament for the emotional commitment

brings the prospect up-to-date by reviewing everything he said and did during the Needs Analysis Presentation.

Then Johnny Jones reviews in great, patient, and earnest detail every last word, comma, and number in his prospective customer’s Financial Report! He asks questions to make certain that the prospect feels that this is his Financial Report, not Walter Mitty Company’s.

when he’s reviewed all of the components of the Financial Report prepared just for his prospect, Mr. Jackson, he asks him this question: “Of

if the Process is to work for you, you must be willing to go through it the same way every single time.

by doing it the same way every single time, you will not have a selling person but a selling system.

That your Primary Aim and your Strategic Objective and your Organizational Strategy and your Management Strategy and your People Strategy and your Marketing Strategy and your Systems Strategy—all of them are totally interdependent, rather than independent of one another.