Sound familiar? The Shepard and the Consultant

Extracted from "Big Brands Big Trouble" by Jack Trout

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Prada suit, Gucci shoes, Dior sunglasses and a Dolce & Gabbana tie, leans out of the window and asks the shepherd: "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one of them???"

The shepherd looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers: "Sure, why not" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his cell phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives and e-mail on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with hundreds of complex formulae.

He uploads all of this data onto his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response, Finally he prints out a full colour, 150 page report on his hi-tech, miniaturised HP LaserJet printer, turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly 1,586 sheep."

"That's right. Well, I suppose you can take one of my sheep" says the shepherd.

He watches the young man select the one of the animals and looks amused as the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car.

The shepherd says to the young man: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?" The young man thinks about it for a second and the says: "Okay why not."

"You're a consultant", says the shepherd. "Wow - that's correct?? says the yuppie. "But how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required.", answers the shepherd.

"You showed up here even though nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question that I never asked, but you clearly know nothing about my business."

"Now, give me back my dog!"

And remember! Don't sell harder. Market smarter. Both you, your employees, your clients and prospects will find it more enjoyable, profitable and attractive.

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