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It's funny, no one I know has a clue what that phrase means, but I'm British so I get to use obscure codewords! It basically means, if you go at something with an all-or-nothing, impatient approach from the outset, you'll scare off the target!
One of the things I see a lot is sales and marketing people making the fundamental mistake of trying to say and do too much, too soon in the relationship. It's like dating (if you are young enough to remember what that's like!); you don't talk to your date about meeting your mother on the first date, or spew out your life story in the first sentence. It takes time!
It's one of the things that undermines a solid approach to demand generation (and selling). The simple fact is that you don't need to tell your prospect everything you have to say in the first interaction with them...you just have to say enough to get them to take the next step. It has to be useful and intriguing enough to want them to do more; to take the next step. Then, at that next point, you just have to say enough to get them to the next, and the next. Before you know it, the prospect has bought your solution. You may not have caught the monkey, but you've eaten the elephant, one bite at a time!
Taking this approach can be transformational. It helps structure messaging across the buyer's journey, it helps simplify content, to focus subject lines on email and helps enable sales reps more effectively to have sequenced conversations that brings prospects along in a logical way.
One good tool that I have used to help with this in messaging workshops, is the concept of a "spike" attribute. There are a lot of things your company does, but what is the one thing that if you had only 15 seconds to explain, you would say? Try getting your team to lay out all the things your solution does for your customers - the core attributes (try to think of them from a 'pain relief' perspective, not necessarily features and functions). Then organize them as follows:
1. Which elements are 'table stakes'?
These are attributes that every entrant in your market have to have to even be considered for purchase?
2. Which are 'differentiating'?
These are attributes that differentiate you from your competitors. They may not have them at all, or more likely you may do them better, but they set you apart and are critical in your messaging.
3. Which (preferably just one) is the 'spike attribute'? This is 'it'. This is the one thing that you really want to talk about. Again, remember that it might not be the reason that people ultimately buy, but it is something that challenges the status quo, something that gives them a reason for engaging.
Another great tool is the challenger sales and marketing framework. I'll talk a little more about that in a subsequent blog.
But, for now, go out and softly chase those monkeys and carefully digest that elephant!