What Sales Teams Can Learn from Winning Sports Teams
Ten Reasons from Rick Crossland’s Blog
By Michael J Griffin of ELAvate
6 Minute Read
Rick’s blog made me think what we, as sales managers, can learn from coaches of great sports teams to lead a winning, record breaking year in 2021. Let’s review the 10 reasons that make sports teams winners! You can download Rick’s blog and video at the end of my review.
1.0 Talent Development
The year was 1989, the Detroit Pistons were up against the more talented Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA championship. The Bad Boy Pistons won! Even though the Lakers had superior individual talent, the Pistons coach developed his team players to excel in teamwork in their individual strength zone. The Lakers suffered from too much individualistic playing and lost the championship. John Maxwell’s “The Law Of The Niche” - All Players Have A Place Where They Add The Most Value!” was practiced by the Pistons to beat the Lakers. Sales Managers can develop their people best in their strength zone – as hunters, farmers, coaches, customer service. Place them properly, development them consistently.
2.0 Coaching
Maxwell’s “The Law of The Edge” - The Difference Between Two Equally Talented Teams Is Leadership. The sales manager is either the strongest or weakest link in the sales organization. Poor coaching, poor sales achievement. Chally Group research confirms this. The top skill for sales managers is the willingness to train and coach their salespeople. So what are you doing differently as a sales manager to increase your team’s success and desire to win?
3.0 Recruiting
Successful B2B salespeople are golden. Have a monthly personal KPI to attract and interview potential salespeople every month. Keep hunting for world class B2B winners. Let the competition hire the losers. This consistent interviewing also sharpens your ability to hire winners as ramping up losers in the B2B sales world is very expensive.
4.0 Playbooks
Playbooks in sports are the strategies, tactics and skills to win the game. They are bedrock but flexible depending on the competition you face in the market you sell in. Think about it, Liverpool in the EPL has a playbook, but adjusts it for each competitor it will play against. You as a sales manager ensures your team understands and practices the sales strategy in the markets and customers you sell to, the selling skills and product knowledge to be professional and the sales processes each salesperson must master to win sales for long term customer relationships.
5.0 Execution
Rick says, “Execution, of course, is a by-product of great playbooks and great practice, which yields much better execution. On the sports fields when execution goes wrong, it’s very clear to see.” Salespeople need execute the selling skills, product knowledge, and relationship building to win the sale. Your sales people need to execute on the “leading indicators” of their sales activities to bring in the revenue. No execution on leading indicators leads to poor revenue.
6.0 Practice
Rick’s insight is so true. “Obviously, teams have plays, and look at all the practicing they are doing to make those plays run perfectly. Look at your sales force - it’s hard to get them to either role play or to practice their craft, much less read books on sales. Sports players at any level, even high school, are doing far more to practice than our average employees.” Part of the blame is on us - we as sales coaches want sales activity, we want results, we are impatient and we are busy. How much time a month are you committing to training, teaching, role playing, and gaming with your salespeople to improve them before they enter their market or playing field? Both one on one coaching as well as team practice?
7.0 Accountability
Maxwell calls it “The Law of Countability” - teammates must be able to count on each other when it counts. Accountability encompasses responsibility to do your job well. Whether you are a sales manager, a B2B salesperson, from customer service or product support, you are held accountable to “deliver the goods” to support the sale for a win win deal with your customer. The Maxwell “Countability Equation” supports this: Character + Competence + Commitment + Consistency + Cohesion = Countability.
8.0 Resilience
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness to carry on completing the task or job despite difficult circumstances. Hire and train B2B sales people for resilience. Why? B2B sales gets more rejections and failures than most other jobs. It has a longer sales cycle, and B2B sales usually means orchestrating customer players and your internal support team. Google the article by Dr. Katherine King on the “7 Skills of Resilience” and cultivate a culture that supports these attributes in your sales team.
9.0 Discipline
Sales discipline is the practice of training and guiding salespeople to consistently perform in an ethical manner to achieve sales revenue success and increase customer loyalty. Discipline involves using punishment to correct “disobedience.” How well we know this! In B2B sales our customer disciplines us by not giving the appointment, awarding the deal to our competitor, or making a deal win lose for us. In sports, discipline involves attitude and commitment on the practice field. Boxing greats provide us some motivation. “If you work hard in training, the fight is easy.” -Manny Pacquiao. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’.” - Muhammad Ali.
10.0 Scorekeeping
Too many sales managers and of course shareholders place too much focus on revenue attainment. Meeting sales targets is history, it is past, it is a “Lagging Indicator.” We all have sales revenue targets and they tell us whether we are winning in the marketplace or making a profit. What sales scorecard do you have in place to keep score of the “Leading Indicators” of world class successful sales performance? Some of these indicators might mean keeping score on lead development & prospecting, sales appointments, sales coaching, joint sales calls, CRM updating, and a healthy sales funnel. Build a sales scorecard of leading KPI’s for 2021!
Rick’s article unearthed a lot of stuff that sports teams do to be successful in sales! You can view his original video and transcript here.
Be a great sales coach in 2021! Emulate the lessons learned from our winning sport coaches. Do research on your favorite coaches over the holidays and learn what made them so successful.
Michael J Griffin
ELAvate Founder
6E Sales Productivity Consultant