The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Arjun Basu writes (very) short stories on Twitter. He calls them “Twisters.” You should follow him at @arjunbasu. Here’s one: 

The road narrowed. I said, I’m too fat for this road. My wife laughed, but I was serious. I was not happy with my weight. Or the road itself. 

The road keeps changing, doesn’t it? In business, it seems as if at least half our roads are under construction or subject to detours—all at the same time. Has your road to success narrowed? Or are you just too fat to fit? Those are entirely different questions. Or should I say, those are entirely different ways of defining the problem or even of looking at the world. If you see the road as the problem, you let yourself off the hook—but you also condemn yourself to whatever the road has in store for travelers who are too fat for the new road. If you see yourself as the problem, even grudgingly (because you don’t have to love that new road to recognize it, acknowledge it, and deal with it), then success opens up for you.

Leadership Lessons from This Quote

I’m reading a book called “The Leadership Wisdom of Solomon,” by Pat Williams, Senior VP of the NBA Orlando Magic.

Maybe you’ve heard the saying that no one washes a rental car. Think about it. Does anyone try to budget time on the way back to the airport to run through the car wash? Of course not. Even if they’re OCD and are obsessive about cleanliness, they still don’t wash that rental. They know someone at the rental car company will do it, and the thought won't even cross their mind.

“Those who fail to plan are guilty of planning to fail.”

Recently we did an informal survey with some client sales managers asking them to tell us about those things from last year for which they wished they could have a “do over.”

Not surprisingly, the responses included a very broad variety of things they’d dearly love to do over. But 100% of the responses had a single characteristic in common—these sales managers told us they waited too long to make a tough decision. By the time they did, it seemed really obvious, not only to them but also to a lot of others in the organization who had been scratching their heads over the non-action for quite a while.

Managers are Optimistic But are Often Without a Process of Evaluation

That got me thinking about what causes this procrastination and how to prevent it. Part of it is the built-in optimism and the warm interpersonal relationships that we know characterize the best sales managers. But most of the blame goes to not having a clear process of evaluation. A clear process means the manager has:

• Established the criteria by which success will be measured
• Determined the intervals at which those criteria will be noted and evaluated

My job as a Talent Analyst and coach often allows me to be the fly on the wall within our client organizations. I am able to observe the performance of highly talented salespeople and sales managers and witness the milestones and potholes on their journey to success.  One of my greatest takeaways has been the value of effective performance feedback.  It is often the difference-maker between those that achieve greatness and those that don’t. 

Today is the first day of a new year. Time to put the successes and disappointments of last year behind you and focus on the year ahead. If you want to be sure you have a happy new year, challenge yourself to improve your performance in at least one area. But which area?