Salespeople should learn from Greeks not the French
Whether you are one of the faithful following the FIFA 2010 World Cup or one of the millions driven to distraction by the endless coverage in the media, the story of France’s rapid exit from the tournament is a sobering one for anyone in sales.
On June 22 the French national team lost to the hosts of the tournament South Africa. France are ranked 9th in the world and won the World Cup in 1998 and Euro in 2000. South Africa are 83rd and only rejoined world football in 1992.
Only a matter of days ago the petulant multi-millionaire France players refused to train because of a bust-up with their coach. Many of them are considered amongst the best players in the world and the weight of national expectation was on their shoulders. But still they did not make it past the first hurdle in the tournament.
Is your team full of winners but not a winning team? As Clive Woodward, the former coach of the rugby world cup winning England team said, the victory is in the inches not in the feet. It is the many small things that add up that create victory. And selling is ultimately about winning.
For every sporting disappointment there is a sporting inspiration. Greece in 2004 won the 2004 Euro football championship and the team had been written off even at the group stages. In their whole history they had only qualified for two major tournaments.
Salespeople need to learn to lock out distractions and each day recalibrate their attitude. We need to think about what is important today and what we can do to get the victories we want. To achieve those goals we have set ourselves. The big difference between the smaller and bigger football tournament teams is their motivation, hunger and focus.
In the case of France it is so easy to blame everything on the coach Raymond Domenech who has been in his position for 6 years. It is like blaming one’s personal failure on the sales manager when you have the autonomy to go out there and get the business. What a bunch of nonsense!
A former headmaster of mine used to say “excuses are lies”. And I never wanted to be a liar. What is more, we are all too often prone to blame our failures on others when hindsight shows we could have done things differently ourselves.
Examine all those small changes each day that could be regarded as Woodward’s ‘inches’. Do something a little bit better each day and you never need to wait for the big crunch moment. And don’t rely on others to give you motivation or direction. If they do – great. If they don’t, do something about it yourself. Let’s learn the lesson of France’s 2010 failure and emulate Greece’s 2004 triumph.
(this blog written immediately prior to England’s crunch match against Slovenia)
Tags: FIFA, France, inches, sales, selling, Woodward, World Cup