A penny saved…Chances, choices…

A penny saved…A germ killed

When we’re pitching our disinfectant versus that competitor’s sanitizer the difference between those two products may be less than a tenth of a percent (99.99% vs. 100%) in their killing power of the pathogenic bacteria listed on their labels.

But unless we explain it properly the customer probably wont realize that infinitesimal hundredth of a percent is anything but tiny and just how critical that small difference really is.

That’s where some math-based selling comes in.  First, we explain that bacteria can double as quickly as once every twenty minutes by spitting in two (Microbiologists call it binary fission). To make that idea more real we might want to shift to a more understandable visualization.

One way is to explain that if you gave them a penny today and two cents tomorrow, then four on day three and continued to double it every day you’d be handing them the almost unbelievable sum of $5,368,709.12 on day thirty! (Do the math if you don’t believe it)

With that mental picture of what thirty times of doubling a penny can do, you can point out just how serious that one surviving bacterium is after that sanitizer kills just 99.99%. Just one survivor can multiply into literally billions of that same disease-causing bacterium in a day by multiplying three times every hour times 24 hours or 72 repetitions!

Next up: Killing them in the final rinse.

 

Chances, choices …And making them

If only I’d ask her out, pushed for better deal, stayed with it instead of bailing, etc., etc. etc. Then there’s the path not taken (or taken) that might have completely altered our lives. Those and more doubts occasionally run through our heads like some ear worm that won’t go away.

But the fact is we live in the here and now and what we did or didn’t do or how much (or little) those actions really affected our lives is simply academic. And because we are in the present all we can do is to learn from those earlier choices and let them advise us on todays’ options.

One of those choices is whether we should follow the crowd or strike out on our own if our instincts are telling us to go a different way. Or perhaps our fears are counselling us to stand pat and not double down – like deciding on whether or not to risk offering that big prospect a cost guarantee when nothing else has worked.

As the line goes, “No risk no reward” or “No guts no glory”. But at the same time there’s the one that goes “Hogs get fat, pigs get slaughtered”. The bottom line is we have to measure those options and assess which is what likely outcome. But then that’s why you get the big bucks, right?