This is a twist on our usual Short. This one a story. What can mouse pads and yoga mats teach us about capitalizing on "Open to Learn?"

Last week we spent some time with Tito Bohrt, self-described "Sales Mad Scientist" and Founder of Altisales, an Outbound Sales Accelerator.

To illustrate the power of leveraging an "Open to Learn" mindset, Tito shared an interesting story of a guy named Glenn and how he changed the trajectory of Lululemon's business.

We promise we will keep this short (pun intended 😉).

Back in the nineties, Glenn owned a mouse pad company, you know, those little pads we used for the mouse attached to our desktop computers?

Things were going well until the early 2000s when we all moved to laptops and laser mice (that don't need mouse pads). Glenn's market started to tank.

With his wife's birthday approaching, Glenn needed a present and went in search of a yoga mat, since she had just started practicing hot yoga. However, he couldn't find anything suitable. Whenever the yoga mats got wet she slipped, just not a great experience at all.

The 💡 Moment

One day, while playing tennis, he noticed that despite his sweaty hands, his racket grip wasn’t slippery. That's when the light bulb moment occurred.

He thought, "What if I increase the size of my mouse pads, make them the size of yoga mats and then make them of the same material used for tennis racket grips?"

So he scaled up his mouse pads to yoga mat size and coated them with the non-slip material from the tennis racket grips.

After making some prototypes, he needed to find a retailer. Glenn had previously sold mouse pads to Best Buy, but yoga mats were a different market, so he needed to start building new relationships.

Lululemon

He contacted brands like Nike, Adidas, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target, Walmart, and a small company called Lululemon. Surprisingly, Lululemon responded and invited him to present his mats to their buying committee.

Glenn was only provided 10 minutes to present, so he developed a clever strategy. Instead of the typical sales pitch …

"What I am going to show you today will revolutionize your world!"

… he instead engaged the committee with a different approach. He introduced himself as a 'yoga mat nerd' and asked them two unusual questions:

“Do you know your yoga mat’s rollability coefficient?” and

“Do you measure your wet traction coefficient?”

The committee was puzzled. Glenn demonstrated by rolling out two mats—one from Lululemon and one of his own.

The Lululemon mat didn’t lay flat, while his mat did, which tangibly displayed the importance of rollability and how it affects the user experience.

Next, he put his hands on both mats. Both provided appropriate grip.

But then he sprayed water on both mats. When he placed his hands on the Lulu mat, his hands slipped immediately.

His mat? You guessed it. Excellent grip. Thus demonstrating the power of the before-unheard-of "wet traction coefficient."

He finished by sharing some stats that yoga mats weren't just being used for yoga, but there was significant growth in home workouts and post-workout stretching … when people are sweaty and mats become slick.

With that, Glenn's time was up. He told the buying committee that if they were interested, they could call the number on his card, and he left.

The next day, the head of Product at Lululemon called Glenn. He revealed to Glenn that yoga mats were now Lulu's number one priority for the next year, given the size of the opportunity.

Glenn later signed a ten-year contract worth $20 million per year, and retired shortly thereafter.

Glenn's Mastery of "Open to Learn"

Tito used this story to convey that when you properly engage a prospect who is "Open to Learn," in this case the Lululemon buying committee, you open the door to more.

Had Glenn presented the typical product-focused pitch, would he have been able to reset the Product priorities for the entire company?

First - help them imagine the future state. Glenn used the 'rollability index' and 'wet traction coefficient' to help educate the committee on the importance of these attributes.

Second - connect these attributes to an outcome. Glenn's presentation helped the committee see these issues through the eyes of their customer. They could see stamping down the corners that wouldn't lay flat and slipping all over a sweaty mat. Now it's concrete.

Third - connect these outcomes to impact. Do some 'back of the envelope' math. It doesn't need to be perfect, we just need to help them understand the approximate impact of change.

Glenn explained the yoga mat market was worth $532 million and growing. He estimated Lululemon's market share, and predicted that by improving their mats, they could increase it from 7% to 18%, significantly boosting their revenue.

Image compliments of ChatGPT 4o

Takeaways for the Lower Middle Market

We found Tito's "Open to Learn" concept a simple, but powerful way for GTM teams to think about attracting and keeping attention from the market.

Instead of pushing "Open to Buy" (in-market) content to everyone, we instead build authentic, credible learning-based content to a much bigger segment.

This has profound impacts on how we resource our GTM teams.

"Open to Learn" is 13x larger than "Open to Buy"

Tito's a masterful story teller, so we encourage you to our full podcast with him for more of his gems.

Until next week!

Gary & Andy