Burn Your Boat!

By John Boe

I believe that the great NFL Hall of Fame coach, Vince Lombardi, had it right when he said, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor."

Do you agree with Lombardi or are you the type of person who has difficulty staying focused and keeping commitments? Do you allow the negative influences of fear, anxiety, self-doubt and worry to dominate your thinking and sabotage your results?

Sadly, most people fail to achieve their goals, not because they're lazy or lack self-motivation, but because they were never "fully committed" to succeed. I can't think of a single great achievement that has ever been attained without first a plan of action and then an unshakable commitment to its accomplishment.

Walt Disney was arguably one of the most creative dreamers and determined men of the 20th century. He understood the power of commitment and would frequently tell those around him, "When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably."

The ancient Greek warriors were both feared and respected by their enemies. In battle, the Greeks established a well-deserved reputation for their unsurpassed bravery and unshakable commitment to victory. The key to their overwhelming success on the battlefield had far more to do with how the Greek commanders motivated the warriors than it did with issues of tactics or training. The Greeks were master motivators who understood how to use a "dramatic demonstration" to infuse a spirit of commitment into the heart of every warrior.

Once the warriors had been offloaded from their boats onto their enemy's shore, the Greek commanders would shout out their first order, "Burn the boats!" The sight of burning boats removed any notion of retreat from their hearts and any thoughts of surrender from
their heads. Imagine the tremendous psychological impact on the
soldiers as they watched their boats being set to the torch. As the boats turned to ash and slipped quietly out of sight into the water, each man understood there was no turning back and the only way home was through victory.

In your sales career, your battles are not fought with weapons on foreign shores, but within the confines of your own mind. A truly committed salesperson does not have the luxury or the time for the self-indulgence of negative thinking. The true underlying motivation for all success is a deep and unwavering commitment to the task at hand. The sales profession is a demanding and challenging career, but it is also personally rewarding and financially lucrative for those who are fully committed to becoming successful.

If you are being pushed around mentally by thoughts of fear, anxiety, self-doubt and worry, it's time to "burn your boat" and become fully committed to your sales career!

John Boe presents a wide variety of motivational and sales-oriented keynotes and seminar programs for sales meetings and conventions. John is a nationally recognized sales trainer and business motivational speaker with an impeccable track record in the meeting industry. To have Boe speak at your next event, visit www.johnboe.com

For the library - Secrets of Special Ops Leadership

So many books, so little time. I ordered a couple things from Amazon that I needed and figured I would get something to read too.

I liked the book Leadership lessons of Navy SEALS and figured I'd get another book from a special operations officer that described the parallel into the business world.

The author was a commando in the Air Force and has written numerous papers and given many lectures on business leadership.

I've only made it through the first few chapters, but this is a book that I'm having a hard time putting down. Between the historical events of wars and conflicts he touches on and his insights into business, he does a good job of educating the reader and providing real tools for leaders and managers to follow in a corporate environment.

Once I finish the book, I'll give a more detailed review of what I think, but so far this is a keeper.

Principles of Sales Leadership

I have a hard drive filled with every manual and training aid I used while in the Army. Most of it I'll never have any use for in the future, other than for the reason of reflecting back on the 'good old days' but there are folders and documents I look into on a regular basis. One of the folders is called "Leadership". I can hear you already. 'not another post about leadership!' But believe me, leadership is that important. One of the files caught my attention. Actually I shared the files with my Director of Sales who loves to ask questions and hear my war stories, he made a comment on this document and it sparked a conversation, so I feel compelled to write about it.

As you can tell from the title this is about the principles of leadership, Author unknown. My Director (I'll call him "D" since he may not want his name posted in my blog) said that these principles are just as important to know in business as they are on the battlefield because if you lose sight of any of them you are doomed for failure. I've modified the military version for use on a sales floor.

1-1. GENERAL. Leadership is the most essential element of sales power. Leadership provides purpose, direction, and motivation in sales. The leader determines the degrees to which maneuvers, engagements, and protections are maximized, ensures these elements are effectively balanced, and decides how to bring them to bear against the competition.

a. PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP.

(1) BE -

(a) Technically and tactically proficient: Can accomplish all tasks to standard that are required to accomplish the corporate mission.

(b) Possess professional character traits: Courage, Commitment, Candor, Competence and Integrity.

(2) KNOW -

(a) Four major factors of leadership and how they affect each other: The Led, The Leader, The Situation, and Communications.

(b) Yourself and seek self-improvement: Strengths and weaknesses of your character, knowledge, and skills. Continually develop your strengths and work on overcoming your weaknesses.

(c) Your sales reps and lookout for their well-being. Train them for the rigors of sales, take care of their physical/safety needs, and discipline/reward them.

(3) DO -

(a) SEEK RESPONSIBILITY and TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS: Leaders must exercise initiative, be resourceful, and take advantage of opportunities on the sales floor that will lead to victory. Accept just criticism and take corrective actions for mistakes.

(b) MAKE SOUND AND TIMELY DECISIONS: Rapidly assess the situation and make sound decisions. Gather essential information, announce decisions in time for sales reps to react, and consider short/long-term effects of your decision.

(c) SET THE EXAMPLE: Be a role model for your sales people. Set high, but attainable standards, be willing to do what you require of your reps, and share dangers and hardships with them.

(d) KEEP YOUR SUBORDINATES INFORMED: Keeping your subordinates informed helps them make decisions and execute plans within your intent, encourage initiative, improve teamwork, and enhance morale.

(e) DEVELOP A SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY IN SUBORDINATES: Teach, challenge, and develop subordinates. Delegation indicates you trust your subordinates and will make them want even more responsibility.

(f) ENSURE THE TASK IS UNDERSTOOD, SUPERVISED, AND ACCOMPLISHED: Sales people need to now what you expect from them: What you want done, what the standard is, and when you want it.

(g) BUILD THE TEAM: Train and cross train your sales people until they are confident in the team's technical/tactical abilities. Develop a team spirit that motivates them to go willingly and confidently into sales.

(h) EMPLOY YOUR UNIT IN ACCORDANCE WITH ITS CAPABILITIES: Know the capabilities and limitations of your team. As a leader you are responsible to recognize both of these factors and employ your sales team accordingly.

Seems simple enough. BE, KNOW, DO. But it's surprising that some leaders don't know how to BE, couldn't tell you what they should KNOW, and don't DO anything.

Leadership 101.1

I was taking a moment to reflect on some earlier posts and I got stuck on one Leadership 101 and got to thinking I should expand a bit. I wrote the initial post after I had returned from my last deployment and re-entered the professional world. I saw people put in 'management' positions that had no idea how to manage people. They managed spreadsheets and emails but not their direct reports. Managers are responsible for many things. From adhering and implementing corporate policy all the way to measuring specific metrics on their group to show growth/revenue. But what many managers seem to forget is the human factor in all of this. That's where being a leader comes in. If you lead the people in your group well, the other pieces fall into place fairly easily. It should NEVER be perceived a burden to manage the people that work for you. (Which is what I saw.) It should be seen as a challenge and a privileged.

I have been back for about 3 years now and have since moved around a little professionally. I've had the honor of experiencing great managers, true leaders to their people and experienced some not so great ones. Is this a matter of opinion? Sure, I guess, but when all of your staff can't wait for you to get hit by a bus, is it their problem or the managers? I guess your answer to that question will place you in one of my two buckets. :)


Now I know that people hate hearing about my military experience but I find myself deeply rooted in the lessons I learned growing through the ranks. From my lowly days as a Private E-1 to my time getting my Sergeant stripes overseas I took my responsibilities seriously. Again, I was not going to be nominated for NCO of the year or anything, but I did my duty of following orders and then learning to give them to the best of my ability. The Army has a great history of producing outstanding leaders and I had the opportunity to work for some of the great ones. Being a leader for a combat unit is really not different from leading a group of professionals in an office when you boil it down.

Maybe it's a flaw to have extremely high standards of my leaders/managers. But I have high standards for myself and think the people above me should have the same. Maybe that will be my undoing, but then again it's probably not a place I want to work if thats the case.

Leaders should first and foremost lead from example. How can you expect your teams to give 100% when they look at you and see you playing video games, watching YouTube or doing nothing most of the day? (That's a rhetorical question.)

It is a frame of mind that needs to adopted to insure success. Too often I saw managers that acted like dictators barking orders to get things done, or worse gave all of the staff a sense of insecurity by implying they would not have jobs soon. The fact is you will either have a mutiny on your hands or worse show up to work on Monday and get a list of emails with letters of resignations. The idea behind being a manager is to retain your stars, not let them fall to the ground.

If you have members of your staff that deserve harsh treatment, let them go. If you can't correct their behavior without acting like Hitler, then they are doing nothing but sucking up resources and wasting the company money therefore they should just be fired. If your entire staff deserves this, then you need to take about 10 steps back and see what the real problem is. I've never been to keen to 'cleaning house' because the fact is that if this needs to be done then the managers are to blame and not the employees. But too often 'cleaning house' is the case because managers have too much pride to admit they failed and they blame it on everyone around them.

In a work environment your job as a leader is to coach, measure and provide feedback to your staff. The 'work' will get done if these steps are taken. I was at a company that was setting itself up for failure but the front line managers led their people the right way and they continued to achieve dramatic results despite the building falling apart around them and they found a way to keep a smile on their face during the process.

I guess I could go on with this topic for a while, but as I said I got stuck on the initial post and did some reflection. Look around you, are your managers really leading their people or merely standing on the sidelines waiting to point fingers when the game ends? If your in a leadership position and the chips are down, suck it up and start leading. Your people are looking up to you for the example.

Battle drills for sales leaders

The battle drill is a tool that soldiers use to practice fundamental skills for their trade. The one that comes to mind immediately is Battle Drill #6 for the Military Police. I think of this one because I had to do this a hundred times (at least) in my military career.

Battle drill 6 was the act of dismounting a MK 19 grenade launcher from a turret and placing it on a tripod away from the vehicle. Sounds easy enough but when the MK19 weighs in at 72 lbs, it can be a challenge after the 12th evolution and you are being timed to standard.

But we did this drill time and time again for the shear fact that when on the battlefield you needed to know how to do this quickly, safely, and correct to complete your mission.

Drills like these were rehearsed with most of our free time to keep us sharp and on top of our game. The same should be done in business.

Sales leaders should develop their own drills that are specific to their industries. For example I work in a hosted application space for a company called NetSuite that competes with SalesForce.com (CRM) (Who I can say is not supportive of hiring ex-soldiers turned to professionals based on their last failed recruiting attempt.) One of the drills I put together was one focused on calling on every contact I had that was either currently evaluating both our products or had indicated they were current users of SalesForce.com and looking for reasons to switch. It was simple to construct and all that was needed was for SalesForce.com to go down for a length of time long enough for me to complete the drill. Which actually isn't very difficult either since they have gone down a couple times in the past few months for several minutes or more.

1. Generate a list of accounts that fit the criteria and have it saved for future reference.
2. Rank them on status
3. Start at the top and aggressively call on all of them pointing out the fact that SalesForce.com was down and NetSuite was a solution they could count on.
4. If their systems came up before I could complete the list it didn't matter because the damage was done and I could just tailor the conversation on an event that just took place.
5. After the calls were completed a skillfully crafted email explaining the downtime and NetSuites guarantee on a 99.5% uptime was better than anything in the industry would be sent to the contacts and usually hammered the point home.

That's it, 5 steps and a Battle drill was designed that can be executed on command.

There are many situations that can be crafted into these drills for a sales group. What do you have?

Sales Intelligence "SINT"

Sales Intelligence "SINT"

In my continuing effort to gain additional clarity on the parallels between business and war, I have found myself on the topic of intelligence. Many executives talk about Business Intelligence or Competitive Intelligence. So it's nice to see that this subject is not foreign to the professional world.

Initially when I enlisted, I wanted a position in intelligence. A friend of mine was already in and working as a Counter-intelligence agent for the Army. Though they could not tell me what they did (I didn't ask much either), I was able to get a general understanding of what the job entailed. Based on some family background and my own desires, I felt this was a great fit for my military career path. I talked to the recruiters, watched some interesting videos and started the paperwork for a security clearance so I could get put into a training cycle. When I found out that there was a 9-12 month backlog on getting a clearance and open training slots I had second thoughts. The fact was that the time frame I was given was just to get the process started and the actual clearance could take a couple of years. I had to make a decision to get back to regular life for a while and wait it out or choose a different path that would still give me the experiences and training I wanted. I knew that life moves fast and in 9-12 months I could be in a position that I would not want or be able to go to training. I was ready to join then and I made my decision to modify my specialty and join a unit that had a focus on combat field missions. That's how I got into the Military Police Corps. But I digress, as I often do.

Since most companies understand that intelligence on some level is important to do business, I'll outline some of the military classifications of Intel sources and their professional counterparts.

HUMINT: Human Intelligence. The collection of information from human sources. Professionally speaking. Anytime you talk to customers or potential customers you can be getting answers to questions about the industry that will allow you to make better decisions that day or in the near future. This can be done above board and not compromise any laws or regulations. There have been many books written on the importance of this and consulting agencies that can help. With that being said, this can also be done in a way that can cost you your job or have you sent to prison. Just Google "Hewlett Packard spy scandal" to see an example.

OSINT: OpenSource Intelligence. This is the the most widely used of the disciplines mainly because as the title explains, it's open source and freely available. Do you want to know what your competition is up to? Just read magazines, look for the information in widely available places. There is no need to hire investigators or hide in the shadows. In business getting information on the competition is as easy as typing in the web address and clicking through. For example. I come up against SalesForce a lot during business. So I need to know what they are doing that makes them appear to be better. I went to iTunes and downloaded about a dozen podcasts they published that outlined their positions towards every vertical market I work with. They published it for their customers and I can use that information to my benefit. That's a clear advantage of OSINT in the business world. (I'll discuss Podcasts in more detail in a later post.)

FININT: Financial Intelligence. The gathering of information about the financial affairs of your targets or competition, to understand their nature and capabilities, and predict their intentions. This sounds a bit shady, but the fact is that all of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States use this technique to gaining additional market share in their industries. Many smaller companies are getting into the mix of this and realizing that knowing your competition and customers on a financial level will allow them to make better and more direct decisions to keep customers loyal and cut out their competitors. This is done by companies like Walmart that constantly work on having lower prices on goods or the banking industries to analysis risk vs. reward with potential loans. In my line of work this can be used to know what customers have the ability to purchase the products I sell.

These are only some examples and there are many more that you can dig deeper into. When combining these along with the strategies and tactics you deploy to do business, you will inevitably gain an advantage over the competition and even some of the other people in your own company that are beating their heads against rocks trying to figure out "How do I do find out about 'X'"

The Operation Order (OPORD)

The OPORD or Operation Order is the single most important piece of mission planning. A directive issued by a commander to subordinate commanders for the purpose of affecting the coordinated execution of an operation. (Joint Pub 1-02)

The format has not changed much over the years because of it's effective nature. Every troop has experience with them and if you're in a leadership position you better know the format by memory. To hammer the subject home, the Army Rangers have a 10' 10' board at the entrance to the infamous Darby Queen obstacle course outlining the OPORD and stress the importance of reading it twice.

When used effectively, it is possible to gain complete clarity of mission goals and execution. These are created by Generals for the important task of maneuvering troops on the ground and for much smaller tasks of getting some ice in downtown Nasiriya.

Having this clarity on your obstacles, goals, and plan of execution hands troops the power of the outcome. Imagine going into battle and having your commanding officer say "Here you are, now go North and do something." What do you do? We'll save the discussion about being set up for failure later. Lets focus on the solutions for a while.

You NEED a plan and most of us unless we have had some exposure to mission/project planning in the past have zero clue on what to do next. As my Drill Sergeant used to say. "Without clarity, there is chaos." He left out that sometimes there is chaos anyways. But it's always better to have a plan.

The same is true in business. Since I am a sales guy, I'll use that as the example. I have created an OPORD for every one of my positions since I understood what they do. If you play semantics with me for a moment, I'll explain.

1. Situation (Whats going on?)

a. Enemy. (Who are my target companies)

(1)Weather. (Is the industry hot or cold?)

(2)Terrain. (Do they have an advantage because of market share, informed sales people?)

(3)Enemy Forces. (Who's the competition?)

b. Friendly. (Do you have partners to help with the goal?)

c. Attachments and detachments.

2. Mission.

This is an explanation of what you plan to accomplish. Not a short summary of what you want, put some thought into it and write out a couple paragraphs of 'what' you want and 'why' it NEEDS to happen.

My goal is to saturate my sales region with information about the NetSuite product learning the details of the businesses I come in contact with and understanding their needs. Working with them to solve their pain by implementing a solution that gives them business clarity and a means to create a positive cash flow.

By doing this I will gain new contacts in a growing industry by selling awesome products and gaining market share for my growing company insuring a long and profitable career in sales.

That's just an example.

3. Execution. (this is where the rubber meets the road.)

a. Concept of the Operation (Understanding line item 1 how are you going to position yourself?)

b. Specific tasks. ( How many calls are you going to have to make? How many hours are you going to put into it? Brainstorm on everything you can think of that will bring about the result you want.)

c. Coordinating instructions. (What marketing campaigns are being executed? What features are being released? Create a starting point.)

4. Service Support. (Who's going to help you?)

a. General. (Who's in your chain of command, managers peers?)

b. Material and Services. (What tools do you have available? White papers, demonstrations, communication tools?)

c. Medical evacuation and treatment. (When something goes wrong in the deal, who do you turn to?)

d. Personnel. (Do you have product marketing or engineers to back you up?)

e. Miscellaneous. (Every other support platform you can use.)

5. Command and Signal (Who do you report to and how do you close the deal?)

a. Command. (Usually your boss.)

b. Signal. (Ring the bell!!)

6. POC (Point of Contact) (Sign your name.)

This seems like sales 101, but I'd venture to say that 60% of the sales professionals I know do not have a clear written plan of what needs to be done and how they plan on achieving the task. and the other 30% never follow through. The 10% of high achievers in any company will have some variation of this report handy and revise it as needed.

For sales people, having a plan and executing it, is the difference between steak, lobster and a BMW or PB&J and a Yugo. Consistently hitting your numbers or worrying how you are going to pay the bills this month. Where do you fall in the mix?

Some sales methodologies use the same principles and they call them 'Blue Sheets' using Miller Heiman as an example. What ever you call it. You WILL get further in your career by having a plan to get there!

The difference between business and war.

This is a topic I find myself thinking about more often than not. Mainly I believe that people in general understand and excel at things they feel most comfortable and confident with. When you can put an unfamiliar scenario or topic into terminology and draw on past experiences you have had through your life, you will understand them and relate to them in a more positive and effective way. You can train your mind to learn anything you want by doing this. But I digress a little.

By the comparison between business and war, I am not trying to trivialize the boots on the ground. Being an ex-soldier myself, war in it's rawest form is a very dark subject. What I mean to do with this series of posts is generalize and raise specific points of tactics and training I have had and how the parallel between being in the trenches is the same with business as the military when it all boils down to it. Many of you in the business world may already be familiar with some of the terms I bring up. I'll be separating each topic into it's own post as time goes on. Here is the first.

I will start with the most basic. If the fundamental steps are not taken before your work day or before your next mission, you have already begun the process of failure.

Discipline defined: 1 a : control gained by enforcing obedience or order b : orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior.

My personal definition is "Doing the right thing all of the time regardless of who is or is not watching."

The concept of discipline was drilled, pounded and beat into me as a recruit in the US Army. The wonderful Drill Sergeants I had made sure I/we understood this from day one. Because without it, the transition between being a civilian and becoming a soldier would never happen.

The same concept rains true in business. Following direction and doing your job seem like adolescent comments, but where would you be with out them?

Day one of basic training after the initial shark attack. (This is the event that takes place the moment you walk off the bus. When the fear of God is being thrown at you. A dozen men that look like NFL linebackers, that want nothing more than to yell and yell some more.) I was standing at attention in formation getting directions from the Drill Sergeant running the 40 man platoon and before he released us he gave one order that superseded everything. "Each of you will drop and do 15 push ups after you are released. Not just this formation, but EVERY formation for the duration of Basic Training. There is a standard in the Army and everyone will meet it, my platoon will exceed it!" You could feel the unpleasantness in the air from the recruits. Formations can be held 4 or 40 times a day, between that and the daily regiment of push ups that were going to be dealt out by all of the Drill Sgt's as physical punishment, that was surely going to be a lot of pain. To lock in the deal, he made a statement to the other Drill Sgt's and their platoons that we would have this extra duty and he wanted to know if someone did not comply.

From that moment on in every formation, if it was at 1PM or 1AM we would drop and follow our orders. We hated it. At first we were laughed at by the other platoons. We had to do twice as many push ups as the rest of the unit. They and we thought that having to do this was for the shear pleasure of our Drill Sergeant. His own personal evil desires. We sweat for his smile. Even when our Drill Sgt went away for a couple of days and the other Sgt's could care less if we did them. Even telling us we could take a break while he was gone. We did them anyway. Partly because we feared a man that was on vacation, partly because we knew we had to.

Towards the end of Basic Training our platoon hit the final phase of training. Since our platoon was breaking training records and being as high speed as we could. The Drill Sgt congratulated us on our work thus far and asked what we would like as a 'reward'. We could have anything within reason. The concept of a reward was well beyond us at that point. We were machines, we did what we were told. We didn't know what we should ask for. One of the recruits asked if we could stop doing the extra push ups and only do the ordinary 150-200 each day. The Platoon Sergeant asked if the rest of the recruits agreed with this. All of us looked around at each other and then agreed that this would be a great 'reward'. By the look on the Sergeants face we either called his mother a 4 letter word or just ran over his beloved dog. He said something so profound that only a Drill Sgt could have thought of it.

He explained to all of us that from this moment on we were no longer required to do the push ups at the end of each formation. But there is a distinct difference between a good soldier and a great one. That difference is discipline. Even though we are no longer required to drop, if we want to retain our honor we would exercise discipline and continue the push ups because it is the right thing to do. Each of us had been following this order for months and all of us had received the pain as well as the benefits. We had been able to get stronger than many of the other platoons which helped us break those records. Which was how we got into the position we were now in. Discipline is doing the right thing all of the time. Don't cut corners and do your best. Hold yourself to that standard and develop it continually. That's discipline. That's what we had exercised. He told us to remember that. He made a statement to the other platoons assembled in the area that we were no longer required to do the push ups.

He called us to attention and released us. One by one we dropped and threw out 15 push ups. By then 15 was a piece of cake. After a few seconds we started standing up and realized that we could have asked for anything. An extra 30 minutes of sleep, a day pass, anything within reason. We chose to ask for something that was literally 12-15 seconds of time and as easy as reciting my 3 General Orders. Doom on us. We were recruits, not the sharpest forks in the drawer.

We continued the extra duty for the duration of Basic Training. With all of the other classes and events that transpired, we kept the idea of discipline in our heads. Without being asked or told we did the right things. Knowing that discipline was what made us better than we ever were.

That belief is just as true now in business as it was for me in Basic Training for me over eight years ago. Do the right thing all of the time regardless of who is or is not watching. Do you hold yourself to a standard in your daily work life? Are you making all of the calls you need to make everyday? Even when your boss is out of the office? Do you meet and try to exceed the standard? There are many capable and promising professionals out there. Only some of them are actually disciplined. That's what separates the good from the great.

All of us know what the standard is. If you don't, you better ask someone quick. The idea of the standard is for you to know what is expected. What is expected is for you to exceed that standard. Work hard, lead from the front, do your job.

For the next post I'll go over one of the fundamental planning techniques I know. The OPORD or Operation Order. These are used all of the time in the military and I'll explain how they will help you gain laser focused clarity on your job or project and give you the road map to execute and complete your task.