Building the Best Sports Teams...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Nov 28, 2012

Patriots & SalesWith a long weekend of maxed-out football from Thanksgiving Day high school to the Pats, I realize that I'm constantly comparing professional sports teams to professional sales organizations on the basis of....

 

  • Creating playbooks in football=Creating Key Account Plans in Sales
  • Sports teams' daily drills & practices=Sales skills training
  • Discipline & accountability in sports=the same in Sales
  • Football Coaches=Sales Managers

If we really believe that our sales professionals are really that-professionals-then we need to treat them the same way that we would expect that a coach of a professional sports team-like the Celtics or the Patriots-would be working with his players.  The Patriots right now have their mojo, are now in the right groove, and as I look at the other HomeTown teams like the Celtics, even though they're currently having a tough opening to the season, we all aspire to be like a Doc Rivers and not a failure like Bobby Valentine, an ugly dark chapter in the history of the Red Sox.

Need to be Constantly Recruiting...

I also frequently mention to my various heads of sales and CEOs that they constantly need to be looking for new talent, building their bench and always be in a recruiting mode even when they may not have a budget.   In practice, however, the majority of us get caught up in the day-to-day and the pressures of the month and rarely take enough proactive time to recruit ahead of our needs. 

cbsports and salesOne strong exception in my history was CB Vaughn, the founder and genius behind CB Sports, which, back in the day, was the leading sports performance outwear anywhere...not just in skiing where it was clearly the brand.  When I worked with CB as his first president (on the flip side, CB was my first entrepreneur), he would constantly be bringing me potential managers to interview.  Irritating at first, especially since we never had any extra budget in the margin-strained world of apparel, I soon realized that recruiting was a critical part of his job and the process that he created in building a team of great players was an important part of our success.  That, and the fact that he was (and still is although he's moved on from CB Sports) one of the best performance outerwear designers in the business. 

verne Harnish resized 600Tactics from Verne Harnish-Fortune 10/23/12... (Click to the left)

  • Think about scouting for talent the same way you do customer acquisiton.
  • Hang out where the people you're looking to hire hang out.
  • Find out who's winning industry awards, then simply call them up and talk to them.

Jack Derby & SalesAdditional ideas from Jack...

  • Focus on the profile of who you want, not the job description of what you want
  • Plan on 75 hours a year, proactively recruiting; that's only three meetings a month
  • Use every trade show and conference to recruit.  Publicize yourself and people will come to talk with you.  Good for business and great for recruiting.

As the head of sales, the head of the company, and the person in charge of any department, searching for talent long before you actually need those new star performers on the team is not only your job, it's really your responsibility.  All of us have been surprised with the sudden and unexpected loss of a critical player on the team.  This just happened at one of our better companies when a senior manager suddenly resigned, and although management has come up with a work-around, it was painfully obvious during the follow-on discussions over the last couple of weeks, that not only was there no one on the bench that could step up,  the cold reality is that conducting a search will take three months just to find someone of equal talent and then another six to eight months to get that person up to comparable speed.   

Just a few more things to make sure that you put into your business planning and personal scheduling buckets for 2013.  

 

Good Selling !!!

Jack,
Head Coach
Linked In and Sales

 

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sales listening skillsListening

 

Check out our latest addition to our Sales Toolbox on the subject of Listening Skills by clicking HERE. Too often as sales people, simply because we are sales people, we want to tell & sell rather than listen. What we know from our experience is that Listening is one of the most important skills practiced at the initial steps of Qualifying and Discovery in your sales process, which is why we put together this short Brainshark on listening.

 

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