Chris Murray's Blog: Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service - Posts Tagged "team"

In my experience, sales teams appear to fall into two camps - Battleships and Pirate ships.

Battleships are usually (but not always) attached to large corporate affairs, where the marketing department produces most of the presentations and sales material, budgets are put in place and then dutifully spent (whether they have any meaningful effect or not) and where most of the sales team brags about its portfolio of brands rather than its recent, personal achievement.

Pirate ships are dripping with entrepreneurialism.

Everybody on a Pirate ship knows that you need to be constantly one step ahead of those chasing you (or one step closer to those you’re trying to catch), everybody aboard feels a duty to the captain and the ship, everyone realises they have to play their part or get out of the way.

Pirate ships aren’t all small, faceless or youthful - think Apple, Virgin, Amstrad, The Caudwell Group – but everyone on board knows the difference between value and cost, and everyone is driven to make a difference.

Sometimes Battleship people join Pirate ships (never their first choice – something’s usually gone terribly wrong with their careers). They sit in the first couple of sales meetings looking forward to teaching the savages the way of the corporate.

But after a couple of months the pace is too quick for them, the requirement for free thinking, entrepreneurialism and business growth is all a bit of a shock. Due to the fact that there is usually some real selling to be done, they never last all that long.

I’ve found that most true Pirates secretly long to be seen as Battleship material, so they send out CV’s and attend interview after interview.

Should they be lucky enough to be chosen by the great and the good, they arrive on their first day to find life is sooo bureaucratic and slow. There’s no room for change or exciting ideas, no one really wants to save money or create anything meaningful – and when – by their own steam and strength of purpose they actually make a half decent splash - it just gets lost in the massive waves and wake left by the unstoppable Leviathan they’ve joined.

Some decide to stay, some eventually return to a life of adventure on the open seas – but they can do what they want, they have the skills to do whatever makes them happy.



So are you Battleship or Pirate Ship?

Here’s how to recognise which one you’re working for;
　
•Battleship captains hire people that look and act like them, Pirate ship captains hire people to get the job done.


•Battleships hold inquiries and deliver reports. Pirate ships demand action, resolution and continued movement.


•Battleships have a routine to follow, Pirate ships can sail to the island where the treasure’s buried whenever they like.


•If you have an opinion on a battleship you need someone’s permission to deliver it, whereas people who raise their voice on a Pirate ship have something important to say


•Battleship personnel treat training and development like a tick box exercise, Pirate ships train to achieve or to solve a problem.


• Battleships have regular meetings because that’s what they’ve always done, Pirate ships drop anchor only when they need to.


• Battleship crews spend their evenings congratulating each other over dinner and expensive claret, paid for with somebody else’s money. Pirates spend their time drawing new maps, discovering uncharted waters, relishing true freedom and creating their own fortunes.


• Mediocre salespeople on Pirate ships get shown the plank, on Battle ships they get promoted into management

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Thanks for dropping by and reading this post. Here on goodreads, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

If you would like to read my regular posts please click the button that says 'Become a Fan' on my profile page (I'd have preferred one that just says follow but it's not really up to me).
I’d also be over the moon if you'd come and see me over at Twitter (@TheESSClub)

About: Chris Murray has become prominent as an inspirational speaker, author and sales training coach and is founder and Managing Director of Varda Kreuz Training, a company created to deliver sales training that really works - not in theory and not just sometimes, but sales training that really works.

His latest book, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club has been heralded as the Da Vinci Code for salespeople.

When salespeople ask to be put on advanced sales training, it’s worth enquiring about their desired outcome.

Do they want to advance what they’re already doing or are they trying to become better by changing something fundamental?

Other disciplines don’t seem to have the same issues differentiating between the two.

Take music for example. (Stay with me on this - it’s going somewhere)

I had a few piano lessons when I was a kid, enough to learn the basics – stuff like where the notes were and what they were called.

As I grew up, I wish I’d done more, become better - I really wanted to play those sexy, boogie-woogie blues - you know, the kind that people gather round and listen to when super-cool, talented guests just start playing spontaneously in hotel bars.

Later, I started earning enough money to buy a beautiful piano for my home. So I decided to make up for lost time and teach myself – building on what I’d already learnt in my childhood - and bought some music books.

However I’d never learnt to read music properly, I just knew the guitar chords above the notes.

So I had to improvise – had my own style going on – I still knew where everything was and what it should sound like.

Which was good - but not great.

You see, I sounded fantastic to a bunch of drunks in the local pub. I had the plonking sing-a-long rhythm of Hey Jude and Show Me the Way to Go Home to finish off any boozy night.

But there were still those people who had the ability to make a fifty year old, out of tune, upright piano just...bounce.

I longed to be that good.

I really wanted to play that ADVANCED stuff.

So, I took professional piano lessons.

I was told that the first thing I had to do, was break all the bad habits I'd built up over the years, start again and learn to do it properly.

Not the answer I wanted at all.

I wanted the piano teacher to say;

"Hey you’re great! Just a tweak here and there and we’ll have you banging out real tunes in no time!"

What she actually said was;

"We do this properly or not at all."

You see, there isn’t a piano teacher on earth – advanced or otherwise – who could take a student who knows a couple of chords but can’t read music to Rachmaninov by the end of a couple of lessons.

And sometimes - putting a sales team on "advanced" sales training is like giving a pianist, who can’t read music, the manuscript for a complicated concerto.

In the hands of someone who is ready for it – it will be amazing.

Those who aren’t, will just do their best with what they know and when they find they can’t get a decent tune out of the advanced stuff, they’ll just revert to playing their comfortable old tunes, all over again.

As sales people we should continuously look at how we do the things we do and ask;

"Does this just need polishing to ADVANCE it to ANOTHER LEVEL or do I need to be doing something BETTER? Do I need to BECOME BETTER?"

It also helps if you know what and who you're measuring yourself against.

Externally, everyone can see the self delusion of those who believe the way they do something is brilliant because they're the best in their own little bubble - "I've been doing it like this for 20 years, why would I need help? I don't need to get better, just show me how to do some of those tricks."

Take my word for it - no one is ever impressed by a forty-year-old playing chopsticks in the Marriott cocktail bar at midnight.

NB: I was asked by a reader of this article to clarify exactly what I meant by Better and Advanced - and which one was the equivalent of breaking bad habits - apologies if I didn't make myself clear - my reply to the question is detailed below

"Essentially, if you are on the right course - doing the right things and practicing good habits - you will want to advance that knowledge to a higher level.

This allows you to advance from correct form all the way to greatness, dependent on how far you want to take it.

However, sometimes advancement is not what is required - but doing things differently, better.

If you can be self-aware enough to know that there are better ways of doing things other than the options within your current tool kit (which also needs the bravery to step slightly out of your own comfort zone) - you'll start to seek the best advice you can find, recognise role models you wish to emulate - which enables you to realise that there wasn't any trick to ensuring your fingers stretched across the keys, it was simply that you've never held your hand properly - and that can be a bitter pill to swallow. In the article I just wanted to point out that - particularly - in sales training wanting "Advanced" means advancing, moving higher along the same path, whereas deciding there is a better path to be on requires courage and change."

*********************************

Thanks for dropping by and reading this post.

Here on goodreads, I regularly write about Sales, Sales Management and Customer Service issues, topics and trends.

If you would like to read my regular posts please click the button that says 'Become a Fan' on my profile page (I'd have preferred one that just says follow, but it's not really up to me).

I’d also be over the moon if you'd come and see me over at Twitter (@TheESSClub)

About: Chris Murray has become prominent as an inspirational speaker, author and sales training coach and is founder and Managing Director of Varda Kreuz Training, a company created to deliver sales training that really works - not in theory and not just sometimes, but sales training that really works.

His latest book, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club has been heralded as the Da Vinci Code for salespeople.