The Business of Meetings 41: The Ingenuity In Using a Models System with Simon Bowen
We are extremely happy today to be speaking with Simon Bowen, the founder of The Models Method. Simon is an amazing man! He is a true genius in sales and communication, and he has created something truly unique!
In this episode, you will learn how to position your pricing, how you can differentiate yourself, and how you can use models to explain to your customer and your team what you are doing. You will also find out how to start building loyalty from the sales process onwards.
We are sure you are going to enjoy our unique conversation with Simon!
Simon Bowen’s bio
With a strong belief that, if held in the hands of the right leaders, public and private commerce and enterprise can be one of the most powerful forces for good on the planet, Simon Bowen has invested over two decades in facilitating the resolution of complex issues for businesses and organizations of all sizes, across all sectors.
Born and raised in the country of Western Australia, that practical “just get-it-done” ethic has never left him. Combined with multiple tertiary qualifications in education and business and accreditation in several leadership programs and behavioral and talent profiling instruments, Simon’s mix of real practicality, with structured, researched solutions and rich understanding of human nature, allows him to bring a unique clarity to most situations. Utilizing this broad base of experience and knowledge, Simon created The Models Method, a system for elevated and accelerated thinking and influence. The Models Method uses the power of visual models to simplify the complex, make the abstract tangible, and completely shift the dynamic from conflict and contention to influence and alignment. As a consultant, Simon has been in constant demand both throughout Australia and overseas. He attracts very high praise from his clients, and his ability to work with people at all levels to deliver results has made him a valuable resource to organizations and individuals that have ambitious goals to achieve.
Dynamic and thought-provoking, his creativity and enthusiasm make him the perfect catalyst for your success.
How it all started
Simon grew up in extremely small country towns in Western Australia. That meant a lot of driving on country roads, and to give each other directions, they would often grab a stick and draw the map in the dirt. So nobody ever went anywhere distant without first representing the journey as a model or picture.
His early working life
Simon spent his early working life in electrics and electronics. You can’t see electricity, and there are no moving parts in electronics, so if you are to design or repair a circuit, you will first draw it or look at it on paper.
A blueprint
Most of what we do begins with the first physical manifestation in the real world as a picture on paper or as a blueprint.
The easiest way
Simon found that the easiest way to explain complex ideas to people was to draw the idea on paper. And that evolved into models.
The power of a model
Simon has always been a believer in the power of a model. What he is doing with models is creating blueprints for the brain that represent complex ideas so that people can buy your idea off the plan.
Facilitating
Simon has a reputation in Australia for successfully facilitating complex, contentious things.
Simon Bowen’s secret
If you have 100 people in a room who don’t agree on something, you need to frustrate them for the first three-quarters of the available time, according to Simon Bowen. Then start creating a model, and get everyone to contribute to it. Within thirty minutes, they will all agree on an answer.
The way Simon Bowen sold
When you draw, you draw people in. So, drawing models became the way that Simon Bowen sold to his clients. When he was sitting in front of a client, he would draw his way through the conversation. He discovered that as soon as the client asked to take a picture of his drawing, they had bought whatever he had been talking about. He would then offer to walk through the models with the client’s management team, and that would get him in front of the decision-makers.
Testimonials
Simon believes that you do not gather testimonials for marketing purposes. You get them to build your belief in what you do and to gain the power of that.
Changing the language people use to influence
Simon came to realize that with models, he could change the language that people use to influence in every dimension. Not long after that, he realized that the notion of using models was a science of its own, and it was his life’s work.
The two most important systems
The two most important systems are the system for thinking and the system for influence.
Thinking your way through
If you can powerfully think your way through something and then influence others to support you, just about everything else takes care of itself.
A system
Models are a great system because a good model will cause you to think through something in a highly structured way, without shutting down your creativity. And models produce something that you can use to influence other people.
Buyer behavior
The pandemic has created some interesting shifts in buyer behavior. If you draw a continuum, with the boom on one side, bust on the other, and a dividing line down the middle, on the boom side, people will pay for big ideas, strategic improvements, and longer-term solutions. Those sales get made on aspiration.
On the bust side, people are paying for prescriptions, and that is about survival.
When that pandemic hit, we moved from being on the boom side to the far end of the bust side. That shifted buyer behavior dramatically.
Business
The first job of a business is to make a sale. The second is to deliver value. And, if you don’t deliver value, the business won’t survive.
There are four levels of delivery:
- At the lowest level, you could disappoint people.
- At the next level, you only do what you promised to do.
- At the next level, you delight the customer.
- At the top level, you do all three of the above. Simon calls this level the “I should bloody hope so” level.
The highest level of customer service
People want to buy from a hero, and someone they know will be there for them if anything goes wrong. So, the highest level of customer service is to defend the customer.
The sales side
On the sales side, some people sell on price alone. The next level up from that is selling on pressure by creating a false sense of false urgency and scarcity. After that, there is solution-based or consultative selling, where you ask the customers questions and put value in front of them.
Value has changed since the pandemic
Since the pandemic, the perception of value has changed. People have moved away from the idea of perceived value to wanting deep and profound value, based on wisdom. People want to be made to feel safe right now because they are moving into the unknown.
Customer loyalty
Research has shown that 53 percent of a customer’s loyalty gets formed during the buying process. Your customer should feel safer with you than without you, so it is critical to choose the right time to bring them into a safe conversation with a real human who will make a sale to them.
Marketing
Marketing is all about letting the customer know about you while they still have the safety of anonymity. You can differentiate yourself by respecting that and selling accordingly.
How you sell matters
How you sell matters. People all need to feel safe first.
The founder of a very great company
Every great company gets built by a person’s genius. Much of any great company’s genius has been based on the founder’s philosophy and the founder’s history- what they have learned from their wins and losses, and their expertise.
The Origins of Genius Model
The Genius Model is about organizing the intuitive genius of the founder of a company. There are three sides to it, as Simon explains.
Context
The idea or solution that you bring to the table is the “what”. That is all about context. A solution is only as good as the context it serves because context gives everything meaning. Value is only value in the context of what it serves.
Concept
The concept is the big idea behind the value that you are offering and the specific transformational results it delivers to clients.
The delivery
How do you bring the concept to the table? How easy is it? How quickly does it happen? How leveraged is it from a profitability point of view?
Startup
The right time to think deeply and profoundly about the compelling, self-evident transformational value of your product you want to sell would be at the startup of the business. Most people are just trying to survive at the startup phase, however.
Bringing information in
Only eleven percent of the information we bring in from the world around us comes through the ears. When we read, it is still auditory because we speak the words in our heads. So, if you give people visual access to an idea or your product concept, they will see it. What people see is always more interesting than what they hear because 83 percent of the information from the world around us comes directly through the optic nerve, and the eyes are way more emotional than the ears.
Structural access
Giving people structural access via a model gets people to understand and believe what you are demonstrating.
A model for price positioning
Simon has a video and a check-list about his bell-curve model for price positioning that you can access here.
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The link for Simon’s Bell-curve model for price positioning is here.