Back in December, Tesla owner Loic Le Meur was unable to charge his car because of other Tesla owners using the supercharger as a place to leave their cars while they shopped.

 

Le Meur tweeted a complaint to Tesla CEO, visionary and tech golden boy Elon Musk:

 

Loic Le Meur tweets Tesla CEO Elon Musk regarding people parking their cars in supercharger spaces

 

Musk replied within 20 minutes:

 

Elon Musk replies to Le Meur's complaint, promising a change in policy

 

Six days later, Tesla announced that cars nationally would be charged by the minute for excess time spent in supercharger spots.

 

SIX DAYS.

 

Think about how long it takes your people just to get a new laptop through IT. Think about how long it takes to push through any sort of significant change to systems, processes or policy.

 

Tesla is a 30,000-employee publicly traded company with a level of agility and responsiveness that even most start-ups would struggle to match. That goes a long way towards explaining why Tesla is the #1 car company in the world for customer satisfaction.

 

So why does Sales feel so weighed down and slow to adapt by comparison?

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about workflow automation and friction-less buying processes online – how Amazon and other sites feed customers seamlessly through their funnel, and make buying from them so easy it feels inevitable.

 

That’s the sort of friction-free, people-as-automation environment that Musk has created at Tesla… what a brave new world that would be if you could apply the same ideas to the Sales industry.

 

What would sales need to streamline processes and keep on top of customer requirements so easily? New tools? A deeper understanding of how and why customers buy? Better training and more autonomy to act across sales team? More integration with marketing and product teams?

Just thinking out loud here, would love to hear your thoughts

 

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– Tom @WSL