Why Does Your Sales Team Keep Discounting? | Simon Bowen, The Models Method | ScaleUp Radio ep #647

Why does everyone in your business end up selling on price, when you never did? Simon Bowen built The Models Method, and explains why the thinking that founded your business is the one thing you have never written down. Simon Bowen is the founder of The Models Method and creator of the Genius Model, and he works with companies from small businesses to multinationals on turning how a company thinks into a single visual model. He started in electronics design, taught physics and chemistry, and spent 25 years consulting before landing on visual models as the thing that made complex ideas land. In this conversation he argues that you only get commoditised in your market when your genius has already been diluted inside your own business, walks through the three levels of customer problem he calls the iceberg, and explains the four things a customer needs to know before they will buy from you. From 29:35 he draws, on screen, the two by two matrix he uses to unstick a room of a couple of hundred people who disagree with each other, and explains what each quadrant sounds like when someone is speaking from it. Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:49 Welcome, and what the Models Method is (rec 07:24) 01:54 Why the founder's idea gets lost between them and the customer (rec 08:29) 06:00 Circuit diagrams, classrooms, and where the models came from (rec 12:35) 08:35 A gold mine, 2,000 people, and a model that organised them (rec 15:10) 10:25 The source code of a company, and how it gets diluted (rec 17:00) 13:14 Nobody wants a thought leader, they want a sense maker (rec 19:49) 14:05 The iceberg: the known problem, the hidden problem, and the ache (rec 20:40) 19:01 The four things every customer wants to know (rec 25:36) 25:22 Turning intuitive genius into organised genius (rec 31:57) 29:35 The two by two matrix that takes hidden agendas off the table (rec 36:10) 39:10 Geometry, content, choreography: how a model gets built (rec 45:45) 42:25 Mechanics, magic, and the gap down the middle (rec 49:00) 49:39 Where a founder starts, and quickfire (rec 56:14) About the guest Simon Bowen, founder and CEO, The Models Method. https://www.modelsmethod.com   / simonbowen-mm     / the-models-method   Mentioned in this episode Simon Sinek. Simon paraphrases him in the episode, see the note below. The Genius Model: https://www.modelsmethod.com/thegeniu... About the show ScaleUp Radio is a podcast for founders of established businesses who have hit a ceiling, or can see one coming. More than 600 episodes with the founders who got past it. All 600 episodes: https://smart90.co.uk/scaleup-radio Subscribe on YouTube:    / @scaleupradio   From Smart90 Smart90 is the 90 day planning platform behind this show. If something in this episode sounded familiar, the Scaleup Challenges II report analyses what 305 founders said about the same problem: https://smart90.co.uk/scaleup-challen... #ScaleUpRadio #BusinessPodcast #Positioning