Win and Grow by Nailing the Fundamentals
When I was 8-years old I played on a little league baseball team, and my Dad was one of the coaches. The head coach was former player, and was one of those parents who was a little too intense considering our age. He told his assistant coaches to work on force outs, sliding, planning for double plays, and determining the right batting order for these baseball rookies. My Dad kind of chuckled, and said that all these kids haven’t even played the game before and we should start with the simple basics of throwing and catching, where to stand on the field, and how to run the bases but the coach scoffed and wanted to do things his way. A few minutes later, they looked over and saw my buddy Matt catch a ball that I threw to him (probably underhanded) and then Matt threw the ball back to me with the ball in his mitt. The head coach looked over to my Dad and laughingly said, “Okay, I guess you’re right.”
Early in a sales career, sellers are trained and developed on sales skills and product knowledge. How to prospect, how to qualify, how to run a discovery call, how to get to the decision maker, how to overcome objections, and of course - the art of closing the deal. In my first job out of college, I worked for Xerox where we spent 6 full weeks in sales training including flying down to their national training center in Leesburg, Virginia. It was quite the experience, but when I hit my sales territory the skills I needed were much more fundamental.
What if we stopped this over-indexing on sales skills and shifted training and development to more human skills around connection, authenticity, building true expertise, and being a high performance person? What if early career sales training looked more like this:
Listening Skills
Building Rapport
How to Disarm and Build Trust
Authenticity 101
Note Taking
The Fundamentals of Follow Up
Meeting Etiquette (in-person)
Meeting Etiquette (virtual)
Phone skills
Valuing and prioritizing your time
Hygiene, Grooming and Dress
Managing your email inbox
Writing and Grammar 101
Writing and Grammar 102
Writing and Grammar 103
Speaking With Clarity and Conviction
The Power of Routine
Reading Body Language
Refining Your Body Language
Writing Effective Emails
Being an Expert in your Category
Time Management 101
Time Management 102
Mastering Outlook / GSuite
Self Confidence
How to Ask for a Referral
Mental Wellness 101
Mental Wellness 102
A Life of Discipline
Work / Life Balance
Physical Fitness and Work
I posted this list on LinkedIn, and got a few others from folks as well…
Building resilience (via Ari Zucker)
Building a strong personal network (via Patrick Whipkey)
The Art of Curiosity (via George Vittori)
Delivering bad news without losing trust (via Jen Laidlaw)
Connecting, qualifying, advancing and closing are a lot more natural with these fundamentals in place. When I see top performing salespeople who stand the test of time, it’s not their sales skills that shine and separate them from their peers - it’s more fundamental skills. If we put more focus on these basics, we would build an army of STRONG future leaders, and high performance people who will be happier, more fulfilled, and making a difference in the world.