Sales Grit and the Insanity of Measuring What Doesn’t Matter.

It’s not just that we’re not tough enough – not putting in enough effort; it’s the fact that what we measure makes us look like we have it all together.

When we don’t…

And that misdirection limits our ability to achieve the goals we really want for ourselves.

• We measure closed sales and ignore strength of relationship.
• We catalog deal dollar amounts and ignore lifetime client value.
• We demand our terms now and lose out on leverage later.

And this isn’t just a problem for sales and marketing teams.

It affects how we use social media tools, how we think about “prospects”, and how we deliver service (or don’t) after the sale.

It’s a pretty all-consuming reason why our businesses fail to deliver on results.

We measure what’s logical, not what’s magical.

We chose numbers over emotions – spreadsheets over satisfaction – and it’s destroying the foundation of our sales and marketing initiatives.

To be frank, it’s a problem the NFL has been struggling with as well.

After spending years evaluating quarterbacks on brainpower, savvy coaches are realizing that the brainpower alone is not enough to determine if a player will become a superstar. The growing sentiment is that the popular Wonderlic intelligence test fails to capture the most telling sign of star potential — emotional intelligence and disciplined practice.

Here’s the amazing thing that top sports psychologists are beginning to realize about outrageous feats of human accomplishment.

How you feel about a situation is more important than what you know.

Sure you need to practice.

Heck, you need thousands of hours of mind-numbingly practice doing the same tedious task over-and-over-and-over again. That practice is what enables you to even understand that you have valuable “feeling” insights about a particular situation

Without that careful practice, your fear leads you to think that everything is scary and you start doubting whether your perspective at the moment is really just fear or a clever intuition that you need to listen to.

So feelings need to be measured.

And usually they aren’t .

Because it isn’t macho to talk about passion, fear, and regrets.

It’s better to pretend that we never make mistakes. It’s easier to not have to confront our emotional unintelligence.

But when we do, we push ourselves down the pathway to unparalleled sales and marketing success.

Maybe “how are you doing” needs to be more than our obligatory morning handshake. Maybe it needs go be part of our boardroom debate.

How do you feel about that?