I’ve had some really good years in my career. Quota-busting, I-can’t-believe-I-made-this-much-money kind of years.

When I think about them in my quiet moments, most of them were luckier than I care to admit out loud.

I will absolutely stand by a few of them. I created a plan, I worked it, and it worked. In any given year, you’re going to run into a few breaks that feel like luck, but they’re really about being out there in the field so you can be in the right place at the right time. Yes, you work hard to get lucky, and like a friend of mine always says, “You must be present to win.”

I’m not talking about that kind of luck.

I mean the luck that comes when you succeed without knowing why. When you work really hard and do things without really understanding if they move the needle. The kind of success that feels so fragile; you’re up late at night knowing it’s not sustainable, but finally fall asleep when you resign to the fact that if it happened before, it can happen again.

Some of you are nodding your head right now. You’re my kind of people. The kind of people that taste success and want more of it, but realize they haven’t mapped how to reliably get there.

It’s really weird to say I help teams know why they win so they can win more often on purpose.

“Jeff, aren’t there teams full of sales professionals out there every day on purpose trying to create and close opportunities?” 

Yes.

“And despite those efforts every day, you’re saying that most of their wins are happening by accident.”

Yes.

<exasperated> “Help me.”

It’s actually pretty simple. If you don’t know what you’re doing that works, with any specificity, then you’re guessing. If you don’t know why your customers choose you over your competition, with any specificity, then you’re guessing.

When you make guesses and assumptions about both of those concepts (both pretty significant factors in a business transaction), and you win, it’s by accident (or luck, if you prefer).

It looks the same from the outside, and you deserve the awards and accolades for delivering the number, but if you can’t repeat it on purpose, I don’t know how else to describe it.

And it’s dangerous.

Win enough with luck, and you start to believe that it’s more than that. When the wins come, even when you don't know why, you assume the things you were doing were the right ones. So you do more of them. But sometimes, you reward yourself for the wrong reasons, and it starts to unravel quickly.

The market changes. The things that used to work no longer do, and you don’t know how to pivot. Your world starts to fall apart.

I’ve been there a few times, and I don’t wish it upon anybody.

Success in sales means showing up day in and day out and staying consistent with the activities that lead to success. These efforts are aided when you know exactly what moves the needle. In fact, you can do a lot less overall if you stick to what works.

There's no reason to lie awake at night, wondering how you're going to get lucky and hit that number. Not when you can do the work to understand what will make it happen on purpose.

I had a great recording session for the GTM Uncensored Podcast. These guys were so well-prepared. It led to a really great discussion that’ll publish later this fall.

I also spent some time with an old client, re-running them through my “What is Your Why?” exercise during their weekly sales meeting. If you’re interested in having me host a team meeting (pro bono!), I’m happy to do so.

I’ve been on Kyle Porter’s Normal Sport mailing list for a few years now, and a paid member for almost the last two. He does a really fun job of connecting the absurdity of the sport of golf with the absurdity of life in such a thoughtful way.

His writing style has influenced me, and I’m really inspired by the way he’s building his content business. If any of that resonates, then it’s absolutely worth checking him out here.

If I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm in the wrong room. I always feel like I'm in the right one when Marylou Tyler is in it.

She raises the median IQ of any room she's in, and she's warm and welcoming while she does it. As an engineer-turned-seller, the way she thinks and talks about selling lights up every process-oriented neuron I've got. I think she's got it all figured out.

We go back to when Christie Walters and I interviewed her for The Why and the Buy. I was mortified the hotel picked that day to do maintenance work while I was trying to record. She came back for a second episode anyway, because she's the epitome of grace (and prolly because of Christie).

Her more recent work digs into the unspoken parts of sales success, finally measuring the intangibles that have always made top performers great. I'm a fan.

This week’s piece was the first in a brief series I’m putting together about what it means to be consistent. Next week is about what we normally do to get lucky more often, and why I think it’s the wrong approach.

Cheers,
JB