I was reading in the paper at the weekend, about how two football teams, neck and neck at the top of the Premiership on points, who had completely different medical facilities for fixing injured players. As a result, the team that just seems to keep wining the Premiership is able to help players recover far quicker and with more sustainability than the other team. And this has given them a competitive advantage, and these are pretty rare these days
The parallels for a sales team are enormous.
Manchester United have used an underwater treadmill initially designed for NASA called the HydroWorx Underwater Treadmill to bring Antonio Valencia back from a broken ankle incurred in September 2010 and he is looking a better, fitter player as a result.
The parallels. Your sales people get injured and need fixing. I’m not referring to injuries and bone breakages like Valencia; I’m talking about drops in confidence, suddenly lacking key skills, a need for new knowledge, more attention. Do you have state of the art facilities to recuperate the lost confidence, rebuild the skills and knowledge so the salesperson gets back on the road better and fitter than before.
If you do, then you’ll have a competitive advantage.
Can you see why a player’s performance has dipped? And can you help them improve through coaching or counselling or good old fashioned training. The danger is to try and fix them too quickly, and put them back on the road as soon as possible. This is a mistake; as Arsenal are finding out.
The more expensive your players, the more talented and skilled they are, the more sophisticated needs to be your recovery methods and a football parallel with players earning millions, just might help us find the investment for our salespeople.
But the Premiership isn’t won yet, there’s still a few games to go, but perhaps having Valencia back firing on all cylinders might give United the edge needed to win.
