Put Me In Coach
WMMM #091 - This week, I share tips for sharpening our saws.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter March 8, 2025 4 min read
Rounding First, Headed for Second
Major League Baseball's (MLB) 6-week spring training ritual has reached its midway point.
All 30 teams have an equal opportunity to be 2025 World Series Champions.
Every team begins the season undefeated, with a 0-0 record.
Hope springs eternal.
No one cares about your win/loss record in spring training.
The games don't count toward regular season standings.
So, why do they play games in spring training?
It provides enough of an approximation of "game conditions" to accomplish the real goals of spring training.
Teams place less emphasis on winning and more priority on conditioning, skills development, and player evaluation.
It's approximately 6 weeks of priority on behaviors.
Winning is when you compete against others.
Improving is when you compete against yourself.
Rounding Second, Heading for Third
MLB's regular season runs from April through September.
162 regular-season games.
The playoffs and World Series take them through October.
It's the longest regular season in any major sport.
Each game is highly competitive, with the outcome determining the team's chances of competing in the World Series.
It's approximately 24 weeks of priority on results.
Compare and contrast Major League Baseball with Selling
Each has a team of individual contributors.
Each team has a manager.
Each has individual contributors with different roles performing different functions for their team.
Each individual contributor's functions are difficult to perform.
They require considerable skill.
They require lots of practice.
It takes thousands of repetitions to master these skills.
Each team competes against other teams composed of highly skilled individuals.
Yet, there is no spring training in enterprise sales.
No six-week period where the games don't count.
No calendar and quota relief for conditioning, improvement, and evaluation.
Instead of 162 game days per year, enterprise tech sales have 260 (52 weeks times 5 days/week).
Are we really comparing playing an MLB game to a day of selling technology?
Yes, we are.
However, a regular season game day in MLB is a higher-stress proposition for a 5-hour duration (3-hour game with 2-hour game prep) than the typical day in the life of a salesperson.
MLB teams have a bigger audience, and there are more eyes on each player's performance.
There certainly can be highly stressful performance-related moments in each salesperson's day, but not for a 5-hour duration.
In an attempt to compare the two fairly, a salesperson has moments of shorter duration where their performance affects the team's outcome.
Rounding Third, Headed for Home
As salespeople, we must find the time on our own to condition, improve our skills, and evaluate.
When was the last time we read a sales book?
Read a blog or newsletter about selling?
Listened to a podcast?
Recruited a mentor?
Hired a sales coach?
What are we doing to establish our reputation?
Our digital brand?
Attention to Detail or Micromanaging?
I am often called upon for advice.
I receive compensation for it.
When compensation is involved, an element of pressure is attached to my response.
It is impossible to be correct 100% of the time.
But that cannot be my goal.
Using my experience in the domain, critical thinking, and common sense must be the course.
Pressure is a privilege.
Stay the course.
Focus on behaviors, and results will follow.
They always have.
I was recently asked if certain behaviors could be considered micromanaging.
I responded that great leaders have an attention to detail.
The devil is always in the details.
But what is the difference?
The answer is the lesson for this week.
The recent example involved a correspondence with a prospect.
The leader wanted to approve the language and tone of the email.
The leader led a group work session composing the correspondence.
They contributed content for the team's review.
They were not merely dictating the content as they preferred it.
The group responded with feedback.
It was incorporated into the work product.
To be abundantly clear, this was not a democracy.
The leader called the shots and had a certain outcome in mind.
But they were teaching as they went.
The team contributed to the final result.
Five iterations were produced over a 12-hour period over a weekend.
I witnessed passion, attention to detail, and a drive to give their best, even with a seemingly insignificant task.
This is a culture for success.
In comparison, I witnessed an example of micromanaging not too long ago.
It involved internal sales administration.
A pipeline entry.
A weekly update in a column of a spreadsheet, even though the company used the CRM from Salesforce.
The manager (not a leader, not yet anyway) instructed their subordinate to type what I say.
They went character by character in that column.
They changed the data from accurate to what the manager thought their manager wanted to hear.
They made the data for the update inaccurate.
It gets crazier.
The column was formatted to support text.
This allowed for short explanations.
There wasn't a restriction to a particular format for dates or dollar amounts.
Yet, the manager instructed the subordinate to change the way the date was represented from DDMMMYY to MM/DD/YYYY.
The instruction dove deeper into the insertion of extra commas, inconsistent with proper English grammar.
"Delete what you have and re-enter exactly as I say."
"Do it right now while I'm on the phone."
"Type as I speak."
This went on for 2 hours.
From 9:00p to 11:00p on a weekday night.
My assessment of this behavior was the manager's fear of failure.
They feared getting it wrong for a micromanaging superior.
It also showed a lack of trust in their people.
What I witnessed was demeaning and soulless.
This is also a culture.
A culture for failure.
Indeed, that group ultimately failed miserably.
Attention to Detail
The ability to carefully consider all aspects of a task, ensuring accuracy, quality, and thoroughness.
Without losing sight of the bigger picture.
Enhances quality, productivity, and efficiency by catching errors and improving processes.
Micromanaging
Excessive control over small details often involving constant oversight.
Reluctance to delegate
Interference in others' work
Reduces productivity by creating dependency, slowing down progress, and demotivating employees.
Lessons Learned
1) Improving is when we compete against ourselves.
2) Make time for spring training.
3) Focus on behaviors and results are sure to follow.
4) Attention to detail is a trait found in great leaders.
Thank you for reading,
Jeff
When you think “sales leader,” I hope you think of me.
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