The World Sucks Chart – How to Go From Salesman to Powerhouse

Before we begin with sales strategies, there are a couple of bits of technology that you really should learn. One of these is the CPR, which will be discussed in the next chapter. The other is The World Sucks Chart. Kind of a funny name, but very powerful sales technology. I learned these technologies from some very powerful men who taught a class called “Leadership Training”. When I say that they are powerful men, I do not mean that they are high ranking politicians or men with a big influence on national or international policies or huge connections in all the “right” circles or anything like that. These are simply men who possess a huge amount of personal power. People who know them respect them. People who meet them find themselves wanting to know them better. These are the type of men who would speak and you would naturally find yourself wanting to listen.

Using the World Sucks Chart along with the CPR is so powerful that it will not only increase your sales, but it could very well change your life. If fact, you could know twice the sales technology that I do and be gifted enough to know when to use the right technology for every situation. I will use only my knowledge of the service I sell together with CPR and the World Sucks Chart, and I will outsell you. If I use those technologies and you do not, I will have a higher closing rate than you do and higher average sales, no matter how much other tech you use. It is really that powerful

The World Sucks Chart looks like this:

You see that the chart looks like a funnel. The label “Purpose” is used to describe the height of the funnel and “Context” is used to describe the width. The lines inside the funnel are like platforms, and each is labeled (self, family, team, etc.). First we should make sure that we all understand the words “purpose” and “context”.

Purpose is the easiest to define: It is the reason we do something. As you will see in the next chapter on CPR, a purpose is usually to attain a result (or results). More than that, a purpose usually contains a compelling reason to want to achieve that result (or those results). I will give some examples of that as we progress.

Context is an interesting word. I have heard more people explain context in more ways than I would ever care to remember. I have a definition that I like that seems to cover them all – That which surrounds and defines. Simple, yes? If you claim that someone took a quote “out of context”, it means that they gave that quote without the other elements that surrounded that quote which gave it the meaning that was intended when the quote was originally spoken. When I speak of context in respect to sales, I mean it to mean that which surrounds and defines you. In simpler terms – the person your are being. If that is confusing, it won’t be in a few minutes.

I have had the most success teaching about the world sucks chart by offering a sample scenario, so I will do the same here.

Let’s say for instance that I am a young single male (early 20s) who is working as a service plumber for a decent sized plumbing company (sorry. I am a plumber, so this is easiest for me). Every day I wake up, shower, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch TV and go to bed. I have a small apartment that suits my needs. I pay the rent on time, pay my bills, go shopping for groceries and what-not, fix my own meals and do my own laundry. I do enjoy my work, but the enjoyment I get from selling plumbing repairs and fixing plumbing is not really my purpose for going to work. My purpose for going to work every day is so that I can pay my rent, my bills, etc. so that I have a roof over my head, food to eat, clean laundry... I know I need those things to basically survive. My purpose is all about self. The person I need to be to achieve what I need to every day is just who I am – Hard worker, salesman, responsible enough to pay bills on time and a decent enough employee to keep my boss happy. It doesn’t sound too bad, but it is what is known as a shallow existence. Take a look at the chart above and you will see that the “self” area requires a very narrow context, as it is at the very bottom of the chart.

So I am living my life, working hard at my job, and doing a decent job of being successful at the “self” level. All of a sudden I meet some girl that I fall madly in love with. I marry her and have a kid. At this point (or even before this point) I figure out that I need to be much more than just the hard-working guy that works hard, pays his bills, makes his boss happy, etc. I have a family now. If I want to keep this family, they had better find a way into my purpose. Now my every day activities need to be geared more towards taking care of my family. That means that my purpose raises to “family” on the World Sucks Chart. If you look at the chart you will notice that the “family” level is a bit wider than the “self” level. That means that in order to be successful at the “family” level my context needs to be bigger. Now I am “the rock” for my family. I am the “bread winner”. I am a loving husband, the caring father, the shoulder for my wife, the teacher to my child, and a whole range of other “people”.

I have a lot more responsibility now, but an interesting thing happens – a lot of the things that I needed to concern myself with when I was working on the “self” level get handled for me. I notice that when I come home from working a long day, dinner is already made for me. Somehow my laundry is always clean. I spend less time doing chores around the house, yet the house is always clean. It is called the Rule of Reciprocity – the more that you do for somebody, the more inclined they are to help you with the things that would otherwise keep you from doing things for them. Okay, so that is not EXACTLY how it would be defined, but you get my meaning…

So here I am, happily doing my best to be successful at the family level when I happen to notice that I sometimes have the tendency to slip back down into “self” mode. That is usually followed by nights spent sleeping on the couch, a lack of warm meals, and dirty laundry. That is what’s known as the “Sucking” action of the World Sucks Chart. Somewhere there is a law written that wherever you are on the World Sucks Chart, the world will inevitably suck you down a level. The only way to be successful at one level is to attempt to be successful at the next higher level. Knowing this little bit of information is what makes The World Sucks Chart such a powerful tool. Knowing that in order to be successful at family I need to be working towards team, I decide to raise my purpose to “team”. Of course as “team” requires a wider context, I will need to closely study the man that I need to be in order to be successful at the “team” level. I decide that I have things that I can teach the other members of my team. I can learn from my team. I can be there for my team to help them close a job, act as a supervisor, or just be a helping hand. Now in addition to all of the people I need to be in order to be successful with my family I also have to be a supervisor/helper/ teacher/listener for my team. Do you kind of see where I am going with this?

While in the process of working with my team I find the Rule of Reciprocity coming back into play. While I am helping my team to succeed, they are helping me as well. Another interesting thing starts to happen. Take another look at the chart above. Do you see the little platforms inside of the funnel? Those platforms represent the support that you get from other people, keeping you from being sucked down into the funnel. The higher you go the more support you get.

Of course at some point I will discover that no matter how hard I try to survive on the “team” level, I still keep getting sucked down to “family”. That is not a terrible thing, per-se (if you remember I was working on the “team” level so I could be successful at family), except that the rest of my team will be less compelled to help me if I am not working on the same level as they are. In order to truly support my team to be successful I will need to move up a level. Hello “community”!

So what does any of this have to do with sales? Have you ever heard that people read your “body language” more strongly than the words you speak? Body language is the language of context. Context is the way that you say what you say. It is the look in your eye, the shuffle in your step, the way that you move, they way that you don’t move… it is everything readable about you. People will read your context like a book, and from it get a pretty good idea of your purpose. Let’s say that you called a plumber to your home to fix a plumbing problem. I come out to your home and I am operating on the “self” level of The World Sucks Chart. In essence I am coming into your home and telling you, “Hi, I am here to fix your plumbing so that I can afford to pay my rent”. That is what you, the customer read from my context. Other than the obvious fact that you need your plumbing fixed by somebody, how motivated are you to have me be the one to fix it? Even if you do allow me to fix your initial problem, how receptive are you going to be towards my upsell attempts? Not very, I would think. What if I were to come to your home while operating on the “community” level? With purpose in mind and in full control of my context, I am saying, “Hi, I am here to change the way that you think of service plumbers by impeccably and professionally taking care of every plumbing problem you have, so that you’ll be so thrilled with the service that you will be compelled to tell all your friends about your experience and recommend that they call me next time they have a plumbing concern”. A bit more compelling, don’t you think? If that is the impression that you, the customer, is getting from me, why would you possibly not want to use me?

That is the World Sucks Chart in a nutshell. It’s a great tool to use to gauge where you are in your life and to get you to start to see what it looks like to think “higher purpose”. Although it is pretty straight forward, you will likely find yourself wondering, “Okay, great, but what do I do with it?” That is where the CPR comes into place – and that will be the topic of the next article.

By the way, remember those powerful men that I spoke of in the beginning of this article? They all work very high on the World Sucks Chart. If you want to be powerful, either in sales, or in life, you need to operate with a high purpose.