Tumbling Dice
WMMM #090 - This week, I discuss the element of luck.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter February 22, 2025 3 min read
Always in a Hurry, Never Stop to Worry…
Every sales office has one of them.
At Oracle in the early 2000s, it was Jack in Dallas.
A few years later, in Denver, Steve was the one.
It’s early one weekday morning.
They are all in their cubicles making phone calls.
The printer in the order processing department starts up.
It spits out a purchase order from a customer.
Becky, the order processing manager, retrieves the printout.
She cross-references the customer name with the sales territory assignments.
The customer is Jack’s.
P.O. in hand, Becky rushes to the sales bullpen, looking for Jack.
They stop what they’re doing and look up.
Becky announces that a $2M P.O. just came across the printer.
She holds it high above her head for all to see.
Where’s Jack?
The elevator chimes as it arrives at our floor, the 11th in the Xerox Tower in Las Colinas.
(The 11th floor was the home to approximately 40 Oracle sales representatives in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.)
As the door opens, out walks Jack.
He looks like he just woke up - uncombed hair, disheveled, and running late.
Becky shows him the P.O. that just came in.
Oh?
He was surprised.
Wasn’t expecting it.
However the day started for Jack, it just got a whole lot better.
The bullpen cheered at the first word of the $2M P.O.
They all know how hard it is to get an enterprise to part with their money.
But as the day wore on and they absorbed the body blows of rejection in the typical day in the life of a salesperson, a little jealousy crept into that bullpen.
Things always seemed to fall Jack’s way.
It didn’t help that Jack often showed up late and left early.
The others were working their butts off.
Denver felt similar about Steve.
Both were well-liked by their peers.
It wasn’t personal.
But darn if they weren’t lucky.
Was it luck?
I’ll Have Whatever He’s Having
Was it luck?
Possibly.
If you are reading this message, you are likely in the world’s top 1% of privilege.
We are all lucky to some extent.
Please don’t feel guilty.
It’s not your fault.
Where we were born and the situation we were born into has a lot to do with our success.
Were Steve and Jack “luckier” than the rest of us?
That is possible as well.
If so, there isn’t much we can do about it.
For sure, we could attempt to emulate their behavior.
We could be “like Jack.”
“I’ll have whatever he’s having.”
We could “attach” ourselves to Steve in hopes that his luck would rub off on us.
Why Leave Our Success to Chance?
I have never seen that work.
Let’s focus on the things we can control because so much of our life is out of our control.
Was it luck?
Possibly not.
“Champions are champions
Not because they do anything extraordinary
But because they do the ordinary things
Better than anyone else.”
Former Pittsburgh Steelers Head Coach Chuck Nole
Could it be that Jack and Steve did the ordinary things, those things that go unnoticed by the untrained eye, extraordinarily?
I worked with both guys.
They shared few things in common.
But I saw a commitment level from each of them that differed from the average salesperson at Oracle.
They were singularly focused on their separate and individually unique approaches to making and exceeding quota.
They were less interested in optics.
That is, they preferred to exceed the quota rather than appear like someone who should exceed the quota.
As different as they were, they both did the little things (the ordinary things) better than everyone else.
1-Invest time with Power.
Be interested and interesting.
Be genuine and authentic.
Be you.
Earn trust.
2-Understand the unique value proposition that your solution brings to the table.
3-Engage in a conversation that enables your prospect to articulate the gap between where they are and where they want to be.
Build trust with the questions that you ask.
4-Uncover how important this is for them to resolve by determining if they are willing to commit time and resources to address their gap.
5-Allow your prospect to self-discover that your solution could be the one to help them reach their desired state.
6-Establish urgency by surfacing what happens if they do nothing.
7-Understand their point-of-view for how they will make a decision, who from both parties is expected to be involved, and why it has to be that way.
Bluebird?
Oh, and that $2M P.O. that arrived for Jack, was it the bluebird everyone thought it was?
No, it wasn’t.
We did not accept it.
Jack was negotiating an agreement with that company.
His starting point was 4 times that number.
Someone in procurement thought they would lob an offer into Oracle to see if we would take it.
Appearances can be deceiving.
More from Hall-of-Famer Coach Nole:
“Pressure is something we feel
When we don’t know what’s going on.”
Lessons Learned
1) Focus on the things we can control because so much of our life is out of our control.
2) Do the ordinary things better than anyone else.
3) Ask yourself: “Do you want to win or look the part as you lose?”
4) Don’t leave our success to chance.
Thank you for reading,
Jeff
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