Baseball Farm Teams, the WSJ, and Sales Talent

So here’s something you may or may not care about: I have zero interest or attention for tracking sports (even though I like to play them).

However, I’m highly interested in systems that lead to sustainable success (try saying that three times fast!). I loved Michael Lewis’ Moneyball.

Anyone that’s worked with myself or Erythean Martin (cofounder of the upcoming company “BlackBox Revenue”) knows what sticklers we are on figuring out what actually makes a difference, rather than letting assumptions or myths guide us (like “dials per day matters in B2B sales”). Although of course, making wrong assumptions never happens in selling, as we know. Never.

So normally I’d ignore a newspaper article about baseball. Yawn. But last weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an article about how baseball teams who promote from within (versus those focused on writing huge checks for free agents), are winning in the post-season: “This year, the majority of the teams thriving in the postseason are doing it largely with the help of homegrown players.”

“Executives say promoting your own players makes sense not only because they are familiar, but because everyone in the organization knows how they’ve been trained. Instructors in the Phillies’ farm system, for instance, follow a manual that describes the “Phillies’ way” of doing everything from warming up a pitcher’s arm to defending a bunt. Promoting from within is “a safer way to go,” says the team’s assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle.“

“When a homegrown player does well, there’s another benefit — everyone from the scout who discovered him in high school to the trainer who nursed him through a hamstring injury feels a sense of accomplishment. “This is an organizational achievement,” says Mark Shapiro, executive vice president and general manager of the Cleveland Indians, who developed many of their top players internally.”

Interesting.

Link to the Article:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119214672076456705.html

PS: I’m not a fan (no pun intended) of sales-and-sports or sales-and-war analogies, because my feeling is that the nature of selling is changing. What works today is moving away from a highly competitive, often combative “ABC Always Be Closing!” energy, and more to a receptive, “Are We A Match or Not?” energy.

Especially having been in sales, whenever someone tries to “close” me or uses a sales process that is obivously forced or inauthentic, I always feel like telling them “Wait, John – I’m getting a phone call. Hey, it’s 1995 calling, they want their sales technique back.”