Acceleral

I’m not a political commentator, but it seems to me that Kevin Rudd brought about his own demise because he failed not on the political front, but on the sales front.

Now I can well imagine a chorus of “What the...?” on reading that statement, because on the face of it selling does not appear to have much to do with running the country. Bur bear with me, because far from being an enigmatic opening line, my argument is that sales is so intrinsic to politics that our leaders ignore it at their peril.

Before I answer how sales conventions undermined the self-styled “Kevin 07” as Leader of one small piece of the Free World, it’s worth thinking back to that Kevin 07 nickname itself.

When Kevin Rudd buried John Howard in the 2007 Federal election, the Kevin 07 brand represented hope, youth and vigour. He seemed a take charge type of guy, and his policies were both socially inclusive and still managed to engage the business community.

The brand had sufficient momentum that Kevin 07 easily sailed through 08 and into 09 as the very embodiment of a hard working, disciplined and principled Prime Minister.

Amazingly, not even the GFC, which was a political train wreck for Gordon Brown in the UK and George W. Bush in the US, tarnished his image – if anything, Kevin Rudd’s pump priming of the economy was generally well received as being adroit, appropriate and timely.

However, the wheels came off pretty quickly in the end and in my mind there were only two key sales failures that triggered that:

Do what you say!

Kevin Rudd was as passionate and persuasive on climate change as any political leader, selling himself as a true believer with an agenda to wean Australia off its carbon consuming diet.

By not implementing the ETS, Kevin not just undermined his sales pitch, he changed teams. And he did so without telling the story that would prepare, promote and persuade those of us buying his product that we could be OK putting the sales process into reverse.

Basically, he failed Sales 101 by acting inconsistently to his brand.

You can’t create the compelling event!

The mining resources tax was a disaster of timing that tried – and failed – to use an artificial compelling event to push the sales process faster than it was able to go.

Basically, it came out of nowhere for most people as a recommendation of the Henry Tax Review and its main ‘benefit’ was that it would finance a raft of other tax reforms. Oh yeah, and it might bring those tax dodging miners into line to actually pay the tax that they should be paying.

With an election looming, it’s hard to see why Rudd and his team felt that rushing this new tax into effect would not cause fear, uncertainty and doubt, but for whatever the reason, the mining lobby really did not have to do much to play the FUD card and suddenly Kevin had nowhere to go.

This time he failed Sales 101 by trying to create the compelling event.
 

Conclusion

Of course, serious issues like the insulation tragedy and apparent rorts in the Building Schools for the Future programme did not help his brand. And before that there were any number of hiccups such as Rudd lashing out at a stewardess and his alleged request not to sit next to the Chinese ambassador to Britain on a TV show.

But for me, his failure to stick to the basics in terms of selling his brand and policies on two key issues were the decisions that directly led to his demise.  And that's a lesson that every sales person can reflect on, because it's all too easy to apply spin to try and close the deal, but just as the punters knew what Kevin Rudd was up to, so too will your prospects.