I had to open my mouth. It was the night before Thanksgiving, and I was half-dreaming of turkey legs and mashed potatoes. My brother-in-law came to my house to spend time with my family. He mentioned the Troy Turkey Trot, a 5K and 10K morning race that is part of a strong Thanksgiving tradition in my hometown and asked why he had never heard our family discuss it. I quickly explained it was a "hometown" tradition, not a family tradition.
I then told him that I had planned to go and “watch” the race to support a few friends. In a typical communication breakdown, he heard me say (because it was the outcome he wanted) that I would be running. I laughed it off, but he gave me a ribbing and kept it up well into the night, even recruiting my nieces and nephews to race with him. And the pièce de résistance of his diabolical plan to shame an “old” man into doing something he knows he shouldn’t do? He recruited my (younger) brother. And then, before I truly knew how or why the words slipped out, I said, "Sure. I’ll race.”
I had no business running. I barely had any business walking… especially that early, in cold weather, without actual running shoes or even a shred of training. As expected, mid-way through the race, breathing heavy and in pain, my thoughts drifted, as they always do, or did… when I used to run. I couldn’t stop thinking about walking and running. Walking is a controlled fall. Running is an out of control fall we barely manage to control. We fall and catch ourselves, repeatedly. Fall. Catch. Fall. Catch. When we stop running we’ve simply stopped the falling. And one little “glitch” in the falling or catching can make us trip and fall flat on our face.
With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve unfortunately seen many injured soldiers who have had to relearn how to walk, but outside of being on the wrong end of serious, life-altering trauma, we rarely think about our own walking. We take walking for granted. This is a problem. A big one. We all have heard the cliche: you must learn to walk before you run. But we don't listen to that advice and we rarely heed its simple warning.
On Black Friday, sans the runner’s (and Turkey) high I had the day before, I attempted to stroll the mall, the reward for which would be a greasy pizza and a matinee movie. The longer I strolled, the more I realized I was quickly transitioning from being "uncomfortable" to in pain. Soon enough, I could barely walk. Each step made me more miserable, but I had to push through it. I grimaced as an old woman passed by me on a hover round. I was one ounce of pride away from asking if I could hitch a ride. Truth be told, it was clear I had injured my foot, pretty badly.
As a leader, manager, recruiter, and trainer I have seen too many people who try to run before they can walk. In a Baptism-by-Fire company culture, this is true with any position. It is, however, especially true with salespeople. Training salespeople is a teaching process. It is a learning process. We take sales for granted when we hire a salesperson. Why? Because they surely can sell, right? They’ve sold in the past, for someone else. Does that make it a "no-brainer?" Well, let's see. I surely can run, but that doesn’t make me a sprinter, does it? Nor a casual jogger. And certainly not a marathoner. They all involve running, but different kinds of running. And just because I run, or have run - which everyone can assume I have done - doesn’t make me a runner either. In fact, I apparently, at the trot, didn’t even qualify as a guy-who-can-run-without-getting-hurt.
We too often want and expect every salesperson (who themselves also want and expect) to run hard right out of the gate. Ramp 'em up and let 'em rip. Wrong move. Every new salesperson must be trained to crawl, walk and run. And even many experienced salespeople need to relearn how to walk. Especially when a) too many salespeople, even great ones, don’t know how or why they’re great; b) most salespeople, if they are trained at all, are trained on product/service features and benefits, not actually how to sell; and c) much of their sales training consists of taking a sales ride with, or listening in on phone calls with Big Bill, learning all of Big Bill’s Bad Habits. And don’t be mad at Bill. It’s not Bill’s fault. He wasn’t trained either.
This knowledge transfer is called passing the baton, and it’s bad form if you don't have the right people involved in and managing this process. Going out on a sit with a peer (especially one with bad form) is not training, and it’s not coaching. It's allowing someone to mimic or parrot. Mimic the good, mimic the bad. That's not passing the baton, that's dropping it. It's simple, but embarrassing and painful when you flub it up. Ask any Olympian that didn't finish the race and had this travesty caught on video for the world to see. You're not passing a little hollow stick, you're passing on skills, information, knowledge, process, good form, and best of all, success. Long-term success. You're passing on the win. Many wins.
My doctor told me I was running wrong. I was running toe to heel, like a sprinter, rather than heel to toe. I had horrible form for the race I was running. I never thought in a million years a doctor, or even a running coach, would need to tell me how to run. I’ve been doing it my whole life. I played soccer and football my whole life. I was a wrestler in school and ran on brutally cold winter mornings, before I completed my paper route, and after what we called sucking weight(hardcore calisthenics and not eating anything for a few days), which left me weak and malnourished. Never hurt myself. The lesson was clear: it doesn’t matter where you came from and what you did then, it’s where you are now and what must be done today.
Your salespeople might not have thought in a million years you would ever have to tell or teach them how to sell. That’s a problem. They’re taking something they think is simple, like walking, and taking it for granted. Or thinking that what they’ve done before has prepared them for where they are now. Either they’re out of shape, or out of shape nor trained for your race. You may have hired a sprinter, but need marathoners (sales cycle). Are all of your salespeople “safe to run?” Are they running the wrong way? Have they sold in the past using bad form? Have they got away with that, injury free? How about the company where they previously raced? Does the company have any “nagging” injuries from that race? From that runner who is now your runner?
Think of all your salespeople out there, walking, running, maybe stumbling, or even tripping: tripping over their words, themselves, the customer’s objections, and maybe even dropping the baton when they try to relay information regarding your product features and benefits to your customer. Are they unable to control their fall, “injuring” themselves on the job and injuring your company? Their confidence in themselves? Your confidence in them? Their or your reputation?
One bad sale, whether it’s a short sales cycle (sprint) or a long sales cycle (marathon), is a “race” that can seriously injure your company. And maybe the runner. Both are expensive. A long cycle (marathoner) more so, but in a short cycle if you let a new sprinter run 100 sprints before you catch their bad form, they've already fallen flat on their face 100 times (in some cases, that's just two days of sales calls). Both are unnecessary. Don't, like me, be goaded and peer-pressured into running a race, or let your team run a race for which you/they are not ready, have not trained, and/or are not qualified.
Truth be told, some of your salespeople have no business walking, much less running. They have horrible form. We don’t remember the period in our life, but we all learned how to walk. We inch-wormed, scooched, crawled, stood, wobbled, walked, monkey-ran, and eventually, ran like a child, and finally, like an adult human. You may have more professional crawlers on your team than real runners. Analyze their “form” and train them to race properly. Not just any race, for your race, using the right form, the form you know is best to sell your products and your services to your prospects and customers. Once they have proven they have the proper form, keep on them. Make them “re-certify."
Sales is a race. An exhausting race. It requires training, conditioning, analysis, statistics, support, timing, and a ridiculously strong determination to win, which is why so many salespeople are former athletes. Train them like it’s a sport. Don’t let them work from muscle memory (old form), common, or even cliche sales vernacular, or rote language and actions. Make sure they ditch the "old playbook" from their former team. And never let them rely or fall back on "charisma." That's a joke. Lastly, encourage them to read about sales, but don’t let them read a self-help book and think they’re great. I can read about Karate, but that doesn’t make me Bruce Lee. Remember: most people know enough Karate to get their ass kicked. Have them demonstrate what was "taught" in that book, so you can make sure it is applicable for your sales process, your company culture, your race, etc. You can’t even let someone just "go through the motions" if the motions are going to give them debilitating shin splints or are going to make your customers "seasick."
Train your salespeople to work out the muscles you need them to have for the condition they have to be in to be competitive for your race. Get them clear on their goals, to ensure they can adequately meet your goals, and show them a clear path to the finish line. Don’t let them wing it or bull crap you with a thrown-together list of goals (that are probably more like behaviors or at best, objectives) that they cobbled together 10 minutes prior to your latest sales meeting. You’re training your horse to win the race. Your race. Do they need to be a Thoroughbred or a Clydesdale? Or even a pack mule? Sometimes slow and steady wins the race. Sometimes not. Know your race. And always make sure you have the right sales managers to coach your race (true coaches, not former salespeople who just jump into the race and push them along or sell/run for them to fudge their numbers).
I was woefully underprepared for my “trot.” And I got hurt. I went into the 5K race expecting to come in under 30 minutes. I came in at 29:40. I reached my goal (that I decided upon and nonchalantly announced to my family on the car ride to the race. Sound familiar?), but I did it without understanding how I did it. And I hurt myself to keep pace with my brother, who set the initial pace, and by the way, had to stop due to a wicked stomach cramp at the 2K mark. But he too finished. And he was able to walk away without a debilitating injury. Who got the last laugh there? Who “won” that race? Had he wanted to, he could have raced the following week, maybe even the next day. It took me a year to get "back in the race."
When your team members fall, it’s okay to catch them. But you should always let them know that you’re going to be particularly interested in how they get up. How they study what went wrong, and how they get back in the race. How they make sure it never happens again. If you manage them, you should be coaching them. Not babying them, or allowing them to use their crutches when you know they no longer need them. Not to take excuses. To work together to make sure they never fall again, and if they do, it’s a controlled fall, and it won’t be flat on their face, and won’t unknowingly blow out the arches of their feet. Are they going to be athletes or armchair quarterbacks?
Always remember that sales is a delicate game of psychology. It’s body and mind. Think of a wide receiver in football. They run hundreds of plays just to get that one ball. And they get hit every day. Hard. So do salespeople. They hear “no.” All of the time. They run hundreds of "plays" before they get a yes. Or a ball thrown to them. And they have to hang on to the ball. They sometimes get treated like the plague. People see or hear them coming and they duck back into their offices. Prospects often groan and huff when they've been "caught" by them on the phone. They lie to them. They even try to cheat them. If a salesperson gets hit particularly hard from any one prospect or client, they’re not going to want to get up. And when they get back on the playing field, they’re going to have to tune out the footsteps of the same people that are inevitably going to hit them again, hard. Play after play. Game after game.
Salespeople are the first or second step in your attempt to manage your (potential) client’s pain. In the meantime you have to help manage theirs. It’s not just physical therapy (though you may see the manifestations of the stress with actual physical outcomes), it’s psychotherapy. You’re training and maintaining the brain. The strategy, the confidence, and if you want to keep them, the endurance. They must endure, or you’re going to be doing a lot of hiring. And hiring salespeople is stress on other company “muscles” and "body parts" that you don’t need.
In my race, I seriously hurt myself. I was in pain. But I learned my lesson. I am seeing a foot doctor. I am consulting with a running coach. I’m working on my form. I will run again next year, prepared, in shape and determined to finish once again, pain-free and ready to learn another lesson… in under 27:00. Laugh if you want if you think that's an easy goal set against a low benchmark (the first trot). I'm running my race, not yours. I simply want to shed one minute off each mile. How? Heel to toe. Heel to toe. Fall, catch. Fall, catch. And most certainly, one step at a time. Most of all, I want to finish the race without feeling like crawling on the mall floor on Black Friday, because now that I have fallen… I have seen the light. Letting myself do (body) or think (mind) anything else, is just bad form.
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