Our CEO, Dr. Greg Jacobson, has a cartoon hanging in his office. It must be pretty popular, because I found out Mark Graban actually referenced it a few years ago in this post.

The cartoon depicts a medieval king preparing to fight a battle with swords and shields - and a guy selling machine guns. The king is so focused on his next task, he is ignoring the salesman trying to sell him modern weapons, which would easily carry his army to victory if he took a moment to think about it.

This cartoon is funny because of the parallel between this situation, and one that we often come up against in sales. People are often so busy fighting fires that they’re unable to take a step back and find a solution for the root cause of those fires.