Recommended Reading: “The First 90 Days”

  • Rating: 4 stars
  • Ideal for: sales leaders who are taking on new leadership roles, first-time VPs of Sales, first-time CEOs, any leader tasked with transitioning a team through major changes.
  • Stats: Sold 500,000+ copies in English; translated into 27 languages
  • Case studies: Yes
  • Publication date: 2003
  • Purchase links: Amazon, Powell’s
  • Author Website: www.michaeldwatkins.com

Leadership Lessons: Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell

In an old interview with Selling Power magazine (How High Can You Fly?), former astronaut Jim Lovell likened crisis situations to playing solitaire.

“You pick up a card and that’s a crisis,” he explained. “Only after you find a place to put that card can you pick up another card and move on to the next crisis. You can’t think about the twentieth card in the deck; you have to focus on the card in your hand.”

Lovell was famously the backup for Neil Armstrong on the historic Apollo 11 space mission. This week on the occasion of Armstrong’s death at age 82, Lovell reflected in Des Plaines Patch on the legacy of his longtime friend and colleague: “His legacy is an example if we want to accomplish a project as the American people that we must work together as a team with good leadership and be able to do that. The Apollo program is an example of what you can do if you have the will and given the authority to do something.”

Lovell was never the type to let obstacles get in his way. As a child, he dreamed of flying rocket ships before space travel existed. He wanted to become a rocket engineer, but he didn’t have the money to go to Cal Tech or MIT. No problem – Lovell switched his goal to flying jets.

“If you can’t go in one direction, you set up a goal for something else,” Lovell says. “A lot of times you won’t accomplish them, but when you’re striving, often you luck out and something else opens up.”

In fact, if the NASA doctors had their way, Lovell would never have joined the space program, flown in four missions, or been portrayed by Tom Hanks in a Hollywood blockbuster. Why? He failed a physical exam on what amounted to a technicality. A few years later, however, NASA eased up on physical requirements in favor of piloting experience, and Lovell leapt at his second chance. To be a success, he says, you must persevere.

“When you look at the end result today,” he explains, “it’s easy to think that it was nothing but smooth sailing all the way. But perseverance was absolutely essential to getting to where I am.”

Time to Create a Quick and Mobile Sales Team

We talked with Seth Patton, Senior Director of Marketing at Microsoft Dynamics CRM, for an article published last week in our Sales Management Digest. Patton speaks frequently to sales leaders at industry events like the Sales 2.0 Conference. Here’s what he said about the need for today’s sales teams to be quick and mobile.

It’s not good enough to say, ‘Hey, I’ll wait until I get back to the office to get or share the latest information,'” says Patton. “CRM applications on mobile devices are becoming indispensable selling tools. Five minutes before going into an appointment, reps need real-time information about what’s happening with prospects. I need to know what conversations are going on about those prospects. And I need additional market data and news feeds. Did the prospect recently go through an acquisition? Is there an existing service issue with this customer that you might not know about? You can get that kind of real-time information on your mobile device.”

READ MORE: Four Characteristics of Dynamic Sales Teams

Maximizing Sales Effectiveness: Five Key Factors that Drive Success

According to the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), US-based companies spend approximately $20 billion a year on sales training with about half of that amount being spent on improving selling skills. Despite this level of investment, many sales organizations get low returns on investment (ROIs) on their sales training initiatives. Let’s understand why this occurs.

A common problem with many sales training initiatives is that they are event based (i.e., intensive, multi-day training events) where participants typically forget much of what they learned shortly after the training event. Another challenge is that sales organizations fail to get their frontline sales managers actively involved in the training, reinforcement, and measurement process.

Many sales organizations also have unrealistic expectations regarding their sales training initiatives. Ask sales leaders what outcome they want as a result of a sales training program and most will say increased sales. But sales training can’t directly increase sales; it can only change the behaviors that, when consistently applied, lead to increased sales. And that’s the key challenge: getting sales professionals to adopt the right selling skills.

So what can a sales organization do to maximize its ROI from a sales training initiative? Start by taking a more strategic view of training, one that goes beyond just the delivery of training, and focus on developing and implementing sales training programs that incorporate the following five factors.

    1. Motivation 
    2. Customization
    3. Delivery
    4. Reinforcement 
    5. Measurement

Learn more about how these factors can lead to sustainable changes in this white paper: Maximizing Sales Effectiveness.

Norman Behar
Norman Behar is Managing Partner of Sales Readiness Group, an industry leading professional sales training company that develops customized sales and sales management programs for business to business sales organizations.