- The 'ivory tower' or 'the trenches'
- Next month's budget or long-term success
- Day-to-day thinking or over-the-horizon vision
- The need for a cohesive positioning or doing whatever it takes to get the sale
I'd had peripheral involvement in the decision to change the strategy and believed that the underlying logic was sound. Still, the sales team was unconvinced.
The Marketing Director had confided in me beforehand that for him sessions like this one were about survival and nothing else, so when he stood up to speak the smell of fear was palpable. He spoke quickly and made no eye-contact with any of the fourteen or so sales managers in the room. Upon finishing he made to leave without Q&A but the sales guys were having none of it. Someone raised a hand, asked a reasonable question and that was that. Hunting as a pack the audience brutalised him for the next 45 minutes.
Did he survive? Sort of.
But what's the point? This guy has a strategy that I know he believes in and yet when placed in a room of the very people he depends on to enact that strategy his only thought is 'survival'. I suppose he left with his reputation intact (if diminished) but he hadn't done a thing to persuade his colleagues to do something he knows they must be doing to ensure everyone's long-term success.
I suppose that the 'survival' analogy comes from media politics. You agree to an interview with a Barbara Walters or a Jeremy Paxman because 'you should', it's how the game is played and so on. Yet once in the chair all you think about is getting out alive.
I can't speak for politicians but I know too many marketers who've watched too much West Wing and so see sales conferences in the same way. A chance to speak to the sales guys en masse is a 100% good thing. If you're not attempting to use the forum to excite and persuade and motivate then why are you even in your job?
Of course, as an 'external' my world is starker: if all I do is survive a session then I ain't going to be invited back.
