Everyone Gets a Trophy for Good Intentions. But Actions? Well...
Coming in hot on this topic! When team members excuse their unskillful behavior and poor results under the guise of meaning well, they lose business. Let's stop THAT.
My kids first heard this bit of motherly guidance around the time when they turned eight: “Of course you have good intentions. But starting now, you also need to take some responsibility for the actions you choose and the results you get.”
One instance that comes to mind is when my son wanted to protect our new puppy from his little sister’s over exuberance. Good intention. He chose to lock her — my daughter — in the back bedroom. Bad action.
🔸 It’s Our Actions That Get Our Results
Putting aside the arguable sagacity of introducing this counsel at such a young age, my experience shows that this premise deserves diligent consideration when it comes to how sales professionals interact with clients and colleagues.
Too often, a Team will leave a client interaction confused about why the client meeting went awry. For some reason (I actually know why!), as they attempt to unpack the moments when the meeting went off-track, their analysis focuses on every aspect of the meeting except one: their own behavioral choices.
I’ll be privy to their debrief, and hear things like this:
The client was having a bad day
The competition bad mouthed us
The room was hot
And while these might all be true, what was also at play in the client meeting were these factors:
The client repeated themselves three times (a clear indication that they weren’t feeling heard), but instead of playing back what the client was saying, the Trusted Advisor chose to ask yet another question
The client began to tell a story of their recent vacation, but then the Trusted Advisor (in a well-intended effort to appear approachable) took over the speaking baton to tell a similar story from their own vacation
The client had only just started to dive into the details of their issues, but the Trusted Advisor interrupted their story without allowing for even more details to surface, and prematurely steered the meeting away from Discovery and into a Presentation
🔸 Notice this
The first debrief list might be true, but none of those elements is in the control of the Trusted Advisor. By contrast, in the second list, every one of the factors can be controlled by the Team. That means: improved outcomes are best served by focusing on where the Team can make a difference; not where the Team is at the affect of circumstances they can’t control.
🔸 Of Course You Meant Well…
Look, no one on the Team got up that day intending to screw it up with the client. (Psuedo-scientifically speaking, no one sleeps well if they can’t assure themselves of the virtuosity of their actions!)
“The integrity of my sleep has been forever compromised, sir.” ~David Foster Wallace
What I’ve come to notice about Sales Leaders & Teams is this: many Teams (even seasoned ones) lack the awareness — and skillfulness — they need to apply the wisdom of this simple formula:
Intention —> Action —> Impact
🔸 But Now You Need to Act Well, Too
In my work with sales cultures, I can point to many instances when a team or leader became significantly more effective just because they learned to distinguish between laudable motivations versus questionable actions that yielded unwanted results.
To be fair, applying this bit of advice isn’t always easy nor obvious; it takes a bit of practice to develop the ability to align our intentions with actions that reliably deliver the results we want.
But imagine the pay-off for client-facing professionals if they were to understand that every action they chose when engaging with clients had the potential to dependably steer the meeting to the beneficial outcomes their Team was aiming for!
Every sales call would advance the client relationship — and the deal — just because no action would be considered trivial; every action would be chosen for its positive contribution to progress. And with repetition, those helpful, aligned actions would become the new habits the Team defaulted to in their client engagements.
🔸 Take Aways (IMHO)
Aligning behaviors with outcomes to get results is like Archery:
Where good intentions are the arrows and the bullseye, actions are the skill of archery.
Securing a quiver of arrows and a colorful bullseye (good intentions) is the easy part. But for those who want to participate in this highly-competitive sport, they need to practice — and master — the skills of archery (actions) in order to win championships (results).
And maybe hang on to this bit of wisdom that my mother shared with me:
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions!”
Put These Ideas to Work
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