Wartime and Peacetime Selling
n the book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, entrepreneur and VC Ben Horowitz talks about leadership. Specifically he wrote about how…
n the book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, entrepreneur and VC Ben Horowitz talks about leadership. Specifically he wrote about how companies need different type of CEO based on the stage and situation of a company: wartime vs. peacetime CEO.
He brought up the example of Google. In the Eric Schmidt era, Google was in a period of massive expansion. The competitive threats were few and regulatory challenges minor. Then Larry Page came back to lead Google as CEO in an era of greater competitive, regulatory, and market threats. Eric was a peacetime CEO, and Larry is a wartime CEO.
The danger of the wrong leadership means the difference between survival and death. The wartime CEO will destroy company growth and morale in peacetime. The peacetime CEO will be asleep at the wheel as the company has their marketshare eaten for lunch.
This same situation occurs in sales. Many of the worst mistakes in building and leading sales teams is not recognizing what type of market reality you are in. It matters because it dictates who you hire, how you sell, how you compensate, how you promote, and how you manage.
In peacetime sales, you have the comfort of understanding your sale. The goal in this period is scale and repeatability. These are companies that are typically well-established, are in a well-understood market, and have well-structured operations. While some larger startups could be “peacetime”, we are more often talking about mature organizations and products.
In wartime sales, you know very little about your sale. Your knowledge is evolving and the goal is to learn as quickly as possible before your competition cuts you down. Speed is valued over process. You are writing the process as you learn, something you often see in startups or companies that need to radically transform themselves continuously because of market shifts and disruption.
As you can guess, each situation will require different tactics. The peacetime sales is about rigor to process. Decisions are much more metrics driven and processes often rarely change outside of small tweaks based on data. Because of the scale of peacetime teams, systems like CRM are religion. Since the market and process are well established, hiring is more structured, onboarding extensive and training & coaching is ample. For a rep, if you follow the process and put in the work, you are on your way to making club every year and crushing your earnings.
The wartime sales team is the opposite in almost every respect. Learning, flexibility, and creativity are more valued. Process and metrics are important, but as a guide rather than religion. You need lightweight systems that optimize for speed and selling time. You hire veterans because you have no time to train and nurture. All training is in the heat of battle. Most reps will not make it past their first year.
So the obvious question then would be what is the transition between the two like? It’s highly disruptive. Few sales leaders and teams can transition successfully. It requires a completely different set of skills to operate in those different environments.
It reminds me of what I read about the generals that entered WWI versus the ones that closed out the war. Those early generals had no ability to adapt to completely new technologies and systems of warfare. You had French infantry in bright colored traditional uniforms and bayonets charging massive German artillery and machine gun fire. They got slaughtered by the tens of thousands in a day
While not life and death, it certainly feels like a killing field when a peacetime sales team goes into war mode. No one is making club or quota. Morale tanks. Reps desert. Who wants to get slaughtered when you can be in a more predictable environment elsewhere?
Going from wartime to peacetime is equally challenging. The rough and tumble vets bristle at the constraints of process. It “crimps their style”. However the team will never achieve scale and predictability if the wartime reps and leaders do not toe the line. Adherence to process is critical for peacetime success.
If you are a sales leader, be aware of those transition periods ahead of time and prepare for turbulence. This means staying aligned to shifts in business strategy and expectations of the market.
If you are a sales rep, ask yourself where you feel most comfortable. Some reps can’t stand the paint-by-numbers sales approach, while others crave more structure.
As you approach your sales year in 2019, ask yourself whether you are selling in wartime or peacetime?
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