Training your Sales Team like the Army
Life in the Army isn’t for everyone. It’s tough, nasty, and brutal at times. The only thing that prepares you for the things you have to do in the military is the training you receive.
The training serves 3 purposes:
1. Skills
2. Team communication
3. Adaptability
Skills:
Of course, there are technical skills that you must learn in the Army. We had to learn how to take move and shoot as a squad. We had to learn how to repair our weapons systems. And we had to learn how to maintenance our vehicles. We learned all of this because they were vital skills out in the field. We dumbed down the learning process and created SOPs for just about everything, even making a cup of coffee had step by step directions.
And this is why it’s critical that every organization, no matter how small has a “sales playbook”. Even if it’s just two co-founders starting out, develop and hone your sales playbook so that once you are ready to hire the onboarding process is less painful. It also allows you to poke holes in your processes. By drawing out, step by step, what the sales lifecycle looks like, your team might be able to identify chokepoints in your funnel.
Team communication:
This is critical for military operations. There’s so much going on that communication is what keeps you and your men alive while overseas. The problems that arise from a lack of communication are compounded when you add in multiple organizations. Imagine trying to coordinate an operation with the Army, local forces, and civilians.
In order to mitigate risk, we trained like we fought and fought like we trained. Communication became second nature. And it’s the same way here at Marketing Eye. We’re a global company with offices in Australia, the US, and the Netherlands, but we keep a healthy line of communication open to everyone in the organization. We use Skype and Asana to constantly to make sure everyone’s on the same page at all times.
Adaptability:
There were some days during my time in the Army where I reached past my comfort zone. Ultimately, my comfort zone grew larger and larger. I became comfortable being uncomfortable. I could sleep outside in the pouring rain, eat cat food, and shoot a fly off a cow’s ass all while keeping a good spirit.
And that translates into business. Your sales folks are going to be put in tough situations and it’s the training you give them that will make allow them to stay composed and in good spirits. This is true for anything that grows. If you want to build muscle for instance, you must put your muscles through hell. Once they begin to get used to time under tension, they grow! Great sales organizations grow in the same manner.
For more tips on growing your sales team, read this: Why John Doe Failed at Sales and Marketing
Sales | Sales Training | Sales Team | Company Culture | Military | Army
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