Good senior leaders and managers often enjoy being invited to speak to employees attending company training courses. The Badger certainly did. His sessions not only always delivered a message relevant to the training course but also provided an opportunity for attendees to ask questions about any subject close to their heart. Their questions were often diverse and required quick thinking to answer, but that’s what made the sessions fun! It was always rewarding to see attendees relax during the sessions, to hear their responses to the Badger’s answers, and to observe body language when the audience stayed silent. It was also pleasing when ‘light bulb’ moments spread across the attendees faces if an answer triggered a rush of understanding.
As a leader strongly focused on IT delivery, the Badger spoke mainly to training course groups from the business operation, delivery, and technical communities. Their questions were sometimes unusual. For example, on one occasion the Badger was asked ‘I hear senior people utter their favourite sayings frequently, but which of these have merit because they encapsulate a truth?’ The Badger gathered his thoughts for a moment before rattling off a string of common phrases in use in the company and signalling that they all had merit because they all captured a truth relevant in any company. The string included, for example, the following:
‘What gets measured gets done…’
‘You don’t jump high unless the bar’s set high…’
‘If you bring problems then bring solutions too…’
‘Time is precious, get to the point…’
‘Decisions aren’t about making everyone happy…’
‘Everyone is a salesperson…’
This last one prompted an indignant response from a couple of attendees who were software engineers. They were contemptuous of salespeople and unequivocal that they were not, and never would be, a salesperson. On enquiring if they interacted with peers in their client’s organisation on their projects they answered yes. The Badger pointed out that they were actually representing the company when they interacted with external people, and that made them a salesperson of sorts regardless of their job title. He also highlighted that being ‘sales aware’ during such interactions was important because they were well placed to identify the early signs of potential avenues of further work which could be fed into the company’s main sales machinery for qualification and potential follow-up by others. They remained unpersuaded, and so the Badger pointed out that without sales the company would fail, and they would be out of a job! Their facial expressions changed as a ‘light bulb’ moment hit home on realising that even technical IT staff must be commercially and sales aware and acknowledge that ‘Everyone is a salesperson’ of sorts. ‘Sales’ is not a dirty word. It is at the heart of a company’s success and the employment of everyone within it. Remember, everyone is a salesperson…
