EXECUTION!

Wes Welker dropped a pass that him right in the hands. Had he made the catch, it would have given the Patriots a first down on their 20 with only four minutes and thirty second to go, leading by 2.

The Patriots lost.

With only 4 minutes to go and only one time out, the Giants were pinned on their 10 yard line, when Marion Manningham made an unbelievable catch down the sidelines for 45 yards. It was unreal.

The Giants won Super Bowl XLVI

The key to success . . . execution. Those who execute, and get it done win. Those who don’t, well don’t.

Success is that simple. Don’t believe me, ask Welker or Manningham.

Nuff said!

I saw this the other day while skiing.  I couldn’t have said it any better. I’m going to adopt it as my saying of the year.

I can think of a number of times where I worked my ass off to kick someone else’s.

I recall one particular time I read an entire frickin’ 100 plus page master services agreement to “understand” the customer relationship better, only to find neither the customer nor the company were operating to the terms of the agreement and the animosity that was bubbling-up was unnecessary. Reading a 100 plus page Master Services legal document is fucking death, I promise you.

Our customer was threatening to go with our competitor and to stop ordering. After reading the entire agreement (which had been in place for over 4 years) I was able to bring more information and clarity to the table than existed.  I was able to get my organization to move on somethings they had dug in on. I was also able to get the client to recognize their demands were outside the agreement and although we could help them, we weren’t contractually obligated to it.

I remember the first meeting after reading the agreement.  I started the meeting with; “Has anyone read the MSA (Master Services Agreement) lately? Silence. No one had been willing to work their ass off.

Working your ass off so you can kick your competition’s ass is about as good as it gets. Who’s working their ass of to kick yours?  Don’t let it happen!

When is the last time you worked your ass off to kick someone else’s? What happened?

More than any other position, sales has a tremendous amount of autonomy.  Like a CEO, this freedom gives sales people an infinite amount of lattitude in how they are going to attain quota.  Sales is a performance based role, like that of a CEO. Therefore, the best sales people approach sales like a CEO.

Great sales people, like CEO’s

• Leverage others to help them accomplish their goals – they don’t try to do it all themselves.  Great sales people know how to leverage the entire organization. Good and average sales people try to do it all themselves.

This unique trait and talent is something all of us have. It is more prevalent in some of us than others, but we all have it.  The ability to understand how others will respond to us, our actions and information is called Theory of Mind.

Having a theory of mind allows one to attribute thoughts, desires, and intentions to others, to predict or explain their actions, and to posit their intentions. As originally defined, it enables one to understand that mental states can be the cause of—and thus be used to explain and predict—others’ behavior.

Theory of Mind can be likened to empathy.  In many ways empathy is at the core of Theory of Mind. By getting into the shoes, and effectively attributing thoughts, desires, and intentions of others to predict actions requires the ability to look outside of ones own mind and perspective.  This ability explains the some of the art of sales. That elusive part of sales which is impossible to quantify and measure, the part of sales which differentiates between the good and the great. the part of sales we all know exists but can’t put our finger on — much of it comes from the Theory of Mind.

Can Theory of Mind be cultivated?  Can any sales person get it? It appears any can, but requires “social and other experience over many years to bring to fruition.”  I’ve seen the best sales people leverage Theory of Mind brilliantly.  They manage an environment with power and precision, moving everyone in the same direction, ultimately driving the meeting and the sale in their direction of choice.

Theory of Mind isn’t manipulation, it’s just the opposite. It is understanding and being able to predict how people think, what they want, and how they will respond innately.  It’s being able to get in the head of your prospects and lead them with the information and actions they are most in tuned to.

Selling is both a science and an art. Theory of Mind is a little bit of the science behind the art.

Yes there are rules, guidelines, operating procedures, and suggested approaches on how to do what you do. But, beyond that there is the way YOU do your job. What’s interesting about this is you get to decide.  You get to decide how you are going to do your job. You get to bring more (or less) to the table than is required and that’s what makes each of us different. We get to decide if we are going to bring passion or intensity. We get to decide if we will use more data or better relationships. We get to decide if we will be agents of change or protect the status quo. We get to decide the things in the cracks of our job.  How we do what we do is the mortar. It makes what we do better (or worse).

Knowing how we do what we do is the goal.

How do you do what you do?  If your answer can be found in your company manual, try again.

From business, to sales, to life, leverage quietly sits at the foundation of success or failure.   Leverage let’s us say no.  Leverage let’s us wait.  Leverage gives us more choices.  Leverage puts us in control.

The problem is leverage is like other assets, it needs time to grow and far too often we make decisions undermining our ability to get leverage.

Have you ever cut a deal to make quota because you needed that one last contract to make your numbers?   That’s what happens without leverage.   Where was leverage?  It was absent because months before decisions were made NOT to make more cold calls, NOT to make more appointments, NOT to do more research, not to do more demo’s.   The deal had to be cut because there was no choice. The pipeline wasn’t big enough.  There were no alternatives.  There was only one decision, cut a deal and make quota, or don’t and miss quota.  This is exactly what happens when we don’t have leverage. There are fewer choices, and less control.

We are stuck in jobs we don’t like because we spend so much on STUFF that doesn’t matter that we can’t quit.  We spend our leverage every day, trickle by trickle. We have no leverage to do what we want, to start a new company, or to try something new.  Our leverage was spent on the partying instead of going to college.  Our leverage is being spent in that 65k car instead of a used 10k car.  Our leverage is being spent in a house bigger than we need.  We need leverage to grow, yet we spend it everyday.

It’s no different in business.  Companies can’t expand or grow because they short change their products and customers to save a buck.   Focused on expenses, revenue, and profit in the short term, they provide poor customer service, poor working environments or cultures and don’t create new innovative products.  To meet the demands of “the street” leverage is forfeited quarter after quarter.  After years of focusing on the short-term a threat arises and there is no leverage to combat it.  The company is unable to respond.  Employees are worn to the bone and have little loyalty, customers are looking for an alternative and the products are stale, unable to generate the revenue needed to respond. There is no leverage.

Leverage is critical, yet people, organizations, businesses, and governments squander it little be little everyday.  Focusing on the here and now costs. It costs leverage and not having leverage has an even bigger cost.  Before you make a decision ask yourself, will this create leverage or cost leverage.   The answer matters.

Are SE’s (Sales Engineers) valuable?  The good ones are worth their weight in gold. To me sales engineers have two roles. To address the technical and complex elements of a complicated technical product or service and to build and manage the technical relationships within an account.  It’s that simple.

I’ve had sales engineers in almost every organization I’ve lead.   I’ve been very lucky to work with some of the best.   I wouldn’t be caught dead without a good team of sales engineers.

SE’s are best used with a very technical or complicated product.  Their job is to be the technical subject matter expert.  The best SE’s can and WILL hold their own with the most technical savvy buyers and geeks they meet.   Good SE’s will not only be able to talk the technical talk but also walk the sales walk.   Good SE’s turn the technical discussion into a sales discussion by translating the complexity into problem solving solutions or benefits. They understand how things work and why that’s good for the buyer.  What makes this skill so important is there are real tangible benefits to a technical buyer sales people are not capable of demonstrating.  Without an SE’s ability to translate technical complexity into value, the sale can be lost.  Valuable SE’s are not only technical, but they know how to sell.   I don’t think enough attention is paid to the “sales” aspect of sales engineers. When this happens you get too much technical and not enough sales.

The other area good SE’s shine is relationship building and demand creation.   In many cases SE’s are invited to parties where sales people can’t go. They participate in trials, lab reviews, tests, and more.  SE’s have access to places sales people just can’t get to.  The best SE’s know they have special VIP access and know how to capitalize on it.  They look for opportunities.  They create demand.  They are proactive.  They educate and inform.  They position themselves as experts to be relied on.  Good SE’s make themselves indispensable to customers.

SE’s are critical to complex, technical sales. I don’t think you can be successful in that type of environment with out them.  With that being said, good SE’s are difficult to find.  It’s not enough to be technically sound.  Understanding how to translate technical knowledge into sales opportunities is how SE’s create their value.

Skip the water, YES!   Now, how do I skip the water more often.

Nothing is done without people.  This cliche has been around a long time.  Despite the trite nature of people being our most important asset, it is true.  Therefore learning to get the most out our people is the magic sauce.

I don’t think you will be surprised then, when I tell you I believe coaching people is a process.  I don’t believe coaching people or managing people can be done reactively.   When people are reactively managed they become confused, frustrated, and lost.

Coaching starts with people who are coachable.  I won’t hire anyone who isn’t coachable.  If I inherit someone who isn’t coachable, I move them on as quickly as possible.  People who can’t be coached will eventually eat your team from the inside out.  Having coachable people is without a doubt the most important part of coaching.  I measure the coachability of  everyone on my team.  A low coachability score isn’t allowed to last very long.

After coachability comes the rest.  I build a list of the skills, hard and soft, I see in each person on my team.  I also include those skills required to do the job well.  I share this list with each direct report every 6 weeks.   The first meeting is the most critical.   It’s their first insight into my assessment of them.    We go through it in painstaking detail.  I share examples why I think they are excellent with executive relationships or poor with team development.  I am open and honest with what I’ve seen, the impact it has on their environment and what I think they need to work on.   I also spend time emphasizing what they are good at and how they can get more out of that strength.  I do this because it is important for people to understand how you see them.  People want to know what their bosses think.

After a couple of one on ones the process becomes much easier and more fluid.  My direct reports and I have had several conversations about their strengths and weaknesses, we’ve come to agreement on my assessment.  They’ve made a commitment to getting the most out of their strengths and mitigating their weaknesses.  We then continue to revisit them every 6 weeks.  They become top of mind.  Never is too much time allowed to grow between discussions.  There are no surprises.  There is no “left field.”   And most importantly, it’s not reactive.

Too often coaching or managing strengths and weaknesses is incident based.   Something happens, good or bad, usually bad, and a discussion ensues.  Incident based management is not the way to address peoples strengths or weaknesses.    An event is the worse way to manage or coach.  Incidents are emotional, they have multiples sides, they are never black or white.   In most cases incidents highlight existing weaknesses or call out an unidentified weakness for the first time.  Addressing a weakness for the first time during an incident never works out well.  It’s too emotional a time.

To develop the strengths or mitigate the weaknesses of your employees, get them on the table early and keep them on the table.   When an incident happens, there will be no surprises.  You and your sales person (employee) will have had numerous conversations about their strengths or weaknesses and I guarentee you, one of them will be at the heart of the incident.

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Last week I created my About.me splash page.  I posted about it a few days ago, you can see it here.

I think About.me is cool and timely as more and more of our identity is moving online.  Setting up an About.me profile should take no more than 10 minutes, but it took me a lot longer than that.

Writing my bio took 10 minutes.  Adding my online sites, like this blog or Twitter and Facebook took less than 5 minutes.  What took the bulk of my time was the picture.  I anguished over what picture to add.  I knew what ever picture I put up would set the tone for everything else.  It would create the first impression and what made it so difficult is unlike offline where we operate between different personas, online incorporates all of our personas. My About.me page needed to capture the entire me, not just one part me and the pic was going to play a HUGE role in that.

Offline we have always separated our multiple personas (our work, home, buddies, etc.) carefully cultivating each for the appropriate situation.  The online world doesn’t work that way.  At least I don’t think it should and it’s this confluence of my entire person into one page that made picking my picture so difficult.

I’m a sales executive.  I’ve run sales teams for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.  I am dead serious about my work.  I continue to be very successful developing highly productive and professional sales teams.  I am very proud of the impact I have on organizations.  I am a student of sales and business and continually look for ways to improve, grow and strengthen myself, my team and the organizations I work for.  I’m a driver. I get at problems with vengeance and measure myself on what I accomplish.

What I’m not is a corporate cog.  I am the guy who calls out the elephant in the room. I won’t be bullied.  I won’t do things just because.  I can’t stand hierarchy without merit.  I respect hierarchy with merit.  I’m a risk taker, but not foolish.  I thrive on data, but am never bound by it. I am very young at heart, but DON’T confuse that with being immature. I am competitive and when I take on things, I like to be the best.  I am a PSIA certified ski instructor. I love bump skiing and I am learning to throw huge air, despite the fact that I’m 42. (check out my day in the foam pit) I’m also a husband and a dad to 3 crazy little girls. There is nothing simple about me and that’s what made picking out my picture so difficult.

A pic in a 3 button suit, with a spread collar, french cuff shirt, wasn’t going to cut it. (but yes I do have that outfit, I am in sales remember.)  It’s to stiff. A plain, casual pic wasn’t going to cut either.  It doesn’t tell a story.  And that was why it was so hard to pick my pic.  How do you tell an accurate story of the entire you without over emphasizing just one part of who you are?

Just like you, I am complicated with multiple facets to who I am.  It’s the confluence of these traits that makes me good at what I do.

Being online makes it more difficult to build walls.  We are going to have to learn to manage all of our different personas in one.  It will be clumsy for a while.  We’ll make mistakes, however in the end, we will all have a much better understanding of who we are engaging with and that is good for everyone.

This is the About.me page.

So what do you think?   Did I pick the right picture?  What does my About.me page say to you about me?