An efficiency lesson from nature
What do Hummingbirds have to do with sales optimization?
Read about the efficient frontier for sales.
Cover photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash
There are at least four of them. But it’s hard to keep track because they take turns. [1]
In front of that crabgrass [2] is a marvel of nature. Just a few inches from my office window are flowers my wife planted to attract Hummingbirds. And attract, they did.
Hummingbirds are stunningly beautiful. Mesmerizing. No wonder I get no work done when these guys are around.
They have evolved to hover while feeding. Honey Bees land on flowers to get nectar. But Hummingbirds are too heavy. They have to hover mid-air, and dance from flower to flower for tiny sips of nectar.
Think about that!
It’s like running on a treadmill to get a nibble of a potato chip. And doing that all day.
Inefficient as hovering is, the net energy gained is more than expended. Hummingbirds manage to store up to 40% of their body weight in fat. Which is needed for their annual 2,000+ mile migration.
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People generally don’t do this because they don’t have the ability to realistically assess these odds. Unfortunately, most analytics vendors focus on replicating time-worn forecasting techniques. Like forecast category rollups. The more advanced ones use an expected outcome—derived by weighting each deal by a probability. But very few of them tell you your estimated odds.
When it comes to straight-line travel, however, Hummingbirds are highly efficient. They are on the “efficient frontier” as shown below. Hummingbirds consume the lowest energy per kilogram per kilometer traveled, for their weight.
But still, this is very inefficient compared to other means of transport.
Scale a hummingbird up to the size of an airplane, and you'd be spending at least 7x on an airplane ticket. And you'd be refueling every 500 miles or so. Scale matters.
Despite its inefficient hovering-while-feeding adaptation, the Hummingbird works! It's a marvel of nature.
Speaking of inefficient feeding… B2B sales. Here’s our blog about that.
More important, what can you do about it?
Focus. Focus. Focus. So you live on the efficient frontier—like the hummingbird when it flies straight.
Read about the efficient frontier for sales here.
[1] A week later. They multiply. Now they are uncountable; at least ten.
[2] Some of the finest that money can buy.
Video taken with iPhone 13, SLO-MO. Zoomed.
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