Barbed Wire
WMMM #080 - This week I share a perspective for success in sales.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter October 12, 2024 4 min read
Durango
Another September and another trip to Durango to visit my friend Steve.
He retired from CBS and moved from Dallas to a beautiful spot in southwest Colorado to raise cattle.
Thirty years ago, our daughters swam together on a USA junior swim team.
We were also USTA teammates and competed most weekends year-round.
When I wasn’t playing singles, Steve was my doubles partner.
We became good friends.
Now, we get together a couple of times a year.
This was my third trip to his ranch.
I like helping him with chores.
But when our wives join us, we mostly go hiking in the nearby mountains.
The Old Jeep
Debbie and I have three daughters.
As each of them reached driving age, my solution to their transportation needs was to buy an old Jeep.
It was their first car.
It had to be a manual transmission.
I wanted them to learn to drive a stick.
Eight years separate Katie from Megan and two years for Megan and Hannah.
I bought three old Jeep Wranglers.
One for each.
Steve bought a new Jeep in 1995.
It’s another thing we have in common.
It’s now an old Jeep.
He has it up at his ranch in Durango.
He uses it to plow snow.
It also doubles as a tractor for dragging his pastures.
One afternoon on this recent visit, Steve asked me to give him a hand with something after we had returned from a hike.
He had an attachment for his Jeep that he wanted moved.
It was lying on the ground in a nearby pasture.
It was his drag harrow.
Barbed Wire
A job for two men, the thing was heavy.
Once we got it up and off the ground, we noticed that it had picked up some barbed wire.
As we untangled the wire from the harrow, I asked Steve when he had put the barbed wire on his fences.
He said he hadn’t.
It was already installed on some older sections of his fences.
Fresh from watching an episode of Yellowstone and Rip repairing a barbed wire fence with a special tool, I sensed a potential project for me to help Steve.
I asked if he wanted to add barbed wire to the rest of his fences.
He said no.
An old rancher had once told him that barbed wire isn’t going to prevent a 1200-pound cow from going through a fence if that is what she wants to do.
Is that so?
Steve confirmed.
He gave me a couple of examples.
One was a cow pushing a section of barbed fence to the ground to get to her calf.
So, on the contrary, Steve would replace the barbed wire with a simple wire fence if he had to make that decision today.
I always appreciate stories about wisdom from experience, especially when they contradict a commonly held belief.
If Steve were to go to the web (or a book on ranching) and search for a solution for securing his livestock, what would he find?
He would find that barbed wire is the de facto solution for fencing pastures to control cattle.
Barbed wire was invented in the late 1800s for livestock deterrence.
DeKalb, Illinois, is the center of the barbed wire world.
DeKalb High School’s sports teams are still known as the “Barbs.”
He would not find advice like the old rancher provided or that which he, himself, had witnessed.
But funny things happen when great solutions age.
When ideas move from theory to practice, we learn more.
We learn from experience.
Nothing informs us like doing.
You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bicycle in a Seminar
Barbed wire remains the standard fencing technology for enclosing cattle today.
Yet, how many ranchers have witnessed otherwise and shared that experience with a fellow rancher?
It has been nearly 150 years since the invention of barbed wire.
We have found countless use cases beyond a deterrence for cattle.
We have also learned that over 60 species of wildlife have been reported as victims of entanglement on barbed wire fences, including horses, bats, and birds.
Horses panic once caught in the barbs and can suffer large patches of skin torn from their bodies, resulting in infection, which is sometimes fatal.
Conversely, cows tend to slowly push on the area of the fence they want to go through, forcing it to the ground, and do not suffer severe injuries.
There are now more environmentally safe solutions than barbed wire for managing cattle.
Succeeding in sales is hard.
It requires practice to get good and lifelong learning to stay good.
There is an endless supply of “advice” on how to succeed in sales.
I can name a dozen different sales methodologies.
How many books about sales have you read?
Nothing compares to personal experience.
The title of David Sandler’s famous sales training book captures this well.
Like most professions, selling takes lots of practice to do it well.
We learn what works and what doesn’t.
If we get good, we understand when it’s time to make changes, to evolve.
We appreciate coaching.
We know when we are receiving authentic advice.
We can tell the difference between experience and a seminar.
Like containing cattle, the best solution to our challenges with sales isn’t found in a book.
Lessons Learned
1) Barbed wire won’t prevent a cow from going through a fence.
2) When ideas move from theory to practice, we learn more.
3) Nothing informs us like doing.
4) The best solution to our sales challenges isn’t found in a seminar.
Thank you for reading.
Jeff
When you think “sales leader,” I hope you think of me.
If you like what you read, please share this with a friend.
I offer my help to investors, founders, sales leaders, and their teams.
I possess the skills identified in this article and share them as part of my service.
In my weekly newsletter, Win More, Make More, I provide tips, techniques, best practices, and real-life stories to help you improve your craft.
