Has Era Of Elite Sport Prep Passed Your Sales Effort By
"This is an era where the best teams throw everything possible at winning, from data analysts to watt bikes to cryotherapy chambers"
Journalist Oliver Brown mentioned this in his withering exposé of England's disastrous Ashes tour for the ages. One with practically zero planning save a mid-trip 'stag do', shorn of practice and coaches, happy instead to rely on "vibes". His wrap mourned the generational hope decaying to lifetime of regret.
Under the stewardship of the leadership's "three unwise men" England not only declined to leave stones unturned, they simply picked them up to lob at anyone questioning their 'method'.
I couldn't help but think of how visible this laser focus was on display by the other Big Teams. Especially Australia and India. Yes, there's the occasional outliers. After all in cricket we have resurgent Saffers and Kiwis at the moment seemingly successful despite, not because, of their 'environment'.
Yet the underpinning theme is now well established.
It is even more so in top level football.
A cocktail of generational talent, indomitable team spirit and good ol' luck-of-the-draw can still bring a trophy lift. But it is not sustainable.
Take the club game.
Teams now drive to matches in two coaches. One for players, another for staff as there are so many now on the support side. Back room has expanded. Once there was solely a Manager. The apex presence. Nowadays though they're merely Head Coach. The role completely deconstructed. Compartmentalised into job titles like Heads of Performance, Recruitment (grown far beyond any ol' Chief Scout), and Academy. With a plethora of new roles reporting in too, such as Chief Data Analyst.
Strength & Conditioning coaches, various flavours of mind gurus and a raft of specific separated responsibilities such as the now vaunted dedicated Set Piece coaches.
As cubrep I saw Enterprise salesrooms were top heavy. Some did have what today is termed a 'unicorn boss'. One sheer force of will driving all through brick walls. Many though had more than one person atop the org chart for starters. Each with the word Sales in their title. Various layers of middle management underneath. Then the lowly people that actually, yunno, sold at the bottom of the sheet.
In support, a nod to the secretarial resource - back then your letters still done by someone properly able to touch type, on the only machine capable of being used for such. Maybe also a junior 'marketing' person, tasked with helping 'leads' flood in, somehow.
Pretty threadbare by today's standards. I then lived the revolution.
Sales Ops departments emerged. Soon ridiculously lost to IT takeovers.
A 2i/c role came. Ending in the quagmire of all the tasks the boss didn't fancy themselves.
Then tensions from either seeking greater focus like through Bus Dev, or broader alignment, such as RevOps.
You'd think it time for Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) to make a comeback. Yet 'AI' appears now 'deployed' to hollow out the weeds. Which, as is the case with many documented stories, tends to shove out the small rump of those who actually made work happen. See Price's Law, and imagine the result when the 'wrong' cohort gets the chop.
We see that in salesteams right now. I've heard plenty of tales about it lately.
A new spin on the "moneyball" approach. Where once you'd automatically cull your bottom tranche of underperformers, today all manner of vital 'support' is being 'streamlined'.
Heartbreakingly, this depletion of selling resource can even occur whilst more people are added into the HR function. Whatever you need, the one thing no business needs more of is any HR.
You still must know which non-quota carrying selling help is required though. And therein lies trouble.
For instance, we have a clear parallel with sport's data analyst. It is someone who owns the observance of process, and its refinement. Yet I so seldom encounter such it makes me often wonder how serious about selling supposedly dynamic sales outfits really are.
There's a classic view from the super-coach of our times, Pep Guardiola;
“Every manager is hired for his ideas and you are sacked for the results”.
What if your ideas won't beget results, regardless? Can you change tack like elite level sport?