I admittedly get a little Uncle Rico in this email — stick with me. It’ll land.
Reply to this email to let me know what you think. Happy to chat.
Be good. Thanks for reading.
~Eric Boggs
CEO @ RevBoss
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Episode #3 of The RevBoss Show airs Friday, September 26th at 12pm EST. All the details are here.
My guest is my friend Aaron Houghton — Founder & CEO at Dory and fellow Tar Heel and OG email marketer.
Dory is a coaching app and community that’s all about helping top performers find their optimal pace and build resilience. We’ll talk about Aaron’s human performance research and how he and his team at Dory are working to build Superhuman Mental Athletes.
I was a QB on some good Stanley Blue Devil pee wee football teams when i was 11, 12, 13. We only lost once over those 3 years...to a team with future NFL pro bowler Koren Robinson.
I wasn't a superstar — I could sling the ball and run a little bit but didn’t score a lot of TDs. I think that Coach put me at QB because he figured out that I was 1) smart and 2) a team player.
Was thinking about this after a conversation with my friend Vince Beese last week. His new book Red Zone Selling makes the case that great salespeople operate like quarterbacks.
They don’t just “run the play.” They read the field, change the call, and move the ball.
Yes, there are COUNTLESS football / quarterbacking sales analogies...all of which I will tell you about right now...
(I'm kidding. I barely keep up with (American) football these days.)
But I do think that there is something deeply instructive in my conversation with Vince. And it's this:
The best sellers are great leaders.
Said another way -- and risking yet another football analogy -- if your team doesn't want to block for you as a seller or pick you up off the turf after taking a big hit, then you're the problem.
Which actually suggests the inverse: the worst sellers try to go it alone.
I loathe hero SalesBros / SalesGals. Fire up LinkedIn and there is probably one at the top of your feed bragging about their salary or selling some "proven" system from their stint at (insert BigTech brand), during which time any half-decent salesperson with a pulse could hit quota.
(And I say all of that as someone that loves selling and loves sellers.)
The truth is that sellers (and founders) are nothing without the team around them that builds, supports, finances, etc. the product / service that they're selling.
The very best sellers recognize this and use it as a secret weapon by:
Involving the team in deals by bringing in a subject matter expert or engineer or client services lead. My team makes the plays, my job is to get them the ball early and often.
Cycling customer and market feedback back through the marketing, CS, and product teams. There is no greater market research than selling…and no better sales intel than customer feedback. Make this a two-way street.
Showing gratitude to the team. It’s a tradition that NFL QBs lavish his offensive line with gifts, dinners, etc. Leaders in sales roles can do the same with gestures as simple as a shoutout on Slack or thoughtful gifts.
These collaborative motions are even more important — and more impactful — when you're a Founder / CEO seller.
When I was 12, my job wasn’t to be the star. Same thing now. I don’t score most of the touchdowns.
My job is to move the ball down the field, get the ball to our playmakers, and be the type of leader that my team wants to play hard for.
Yes — it’s true that I played in the 38th Annual Lil Punkin Bowl in Gastonia, NC in 1992…and yes it’s true that I still had the t-shirt in a box in my office closet.
Good Stuff
Felt affirmed and encouraged by this post from Dave Rosenheim about taking action in the face of uncertainty. It’s all too easy to “treat uncertainty as a stop sign” and wait for clarity and certainty before taking action. Dave encourages the practice of asking a simple question when uncertainty stalls your thinking: “What’s the next useful move I can make anyway?”
The new record Bleeds from Wednesday is super good. There is some deep wisdom in the lyric “I wound up here by holding on” — the video is very Western NC.
This article — What Will Football Look Like in the Future — isn’t really about football but it’s definitely about the future. Hard to explain what this is other than to say that I was surprised that the best scifi I’ve read all year came from an old SBNation article.
Know some good stuff? Reply and tell me about it.