Selling with Data - #81 - Calling a shot and being accountable

On October 1, 1932, Babe Ruth, considered one of the greatest baseball players to ever play, stepped up to bat during the fifth inning of the World Series. The game was tied 4-4. With two strikes against him, Babe paused before the next pitch and pointed to center field. On the next pitch, he blasted the ball right where he pointed, and the ball sailed over the center field fence. Babe's Yankees went on to win the World Series.

A good baseball player will hit the ball 3 out of 10 at bats. A great baseball player points to where they want to hit the ball and then drives next pitch to that spot.

What is the difference between a good seller and a great seller?

A good seller closes 20% to 33% of the opportunities in their pipeline. They focus on building pipeline with enough coverage to hit their number. A great seller calls their shot, and then delivers. They hold themselves personally accountable for what they delivered versus what they promised.

This works for nearly any role, but it really works for sales.

With many sellers now in Q4, it is a great time for sales leaders to look back at Q2 and Q3 commits. Ninety and 180 days ago, sellers commited to how much in sales they would deliver at the quarterly business review (QBRs). With those quarters complete, sales leaders can look back and compare the commitment to what actually happened.

Most sales organizations do not do the look back to hold sellers accountable to the accuracy of their commitments.

I have had success in doing a "closest to the pin" contest. At the end of the quarter, I would report out how close each seller, and sales leader, came to hitting their commitment. It is a great way to reward positive behavior, discourage negative behavior and improve the way teams operate.

I have found that sellers and sales leaders who have the best grasp of sales fundamentals are consistently closest to the pin. The sellers who are less disciplined and dependent on unpredictable or outlier wins find their results are lumpy and typically not close to their commitments. The performance numbers might be great, but if the predictability isn't good, it showcases opportunities to improve or, in some cases, reveals simple blind luck. The system has one caveat, the seller who commits zero and achieves zero might be closest to the pin, but that doesn't count as great – or even good!

Holding myself accountable on my 2024 predictions

In December 2023, I wrote an article Selling with Data #62 - My top seven predictions for 2024. Now that we are nearly through the year, let's see how close my predictions were to what has happened.

Prediction 1 - CFOs will continue reducing IT expenses , FinOps will be hot. I WAS CORRECT! Proof: CFOs Continue to Flex Their Cost-Cutting Muscles, FinOps SaaS: The missing piece of the puzzle

Prediction 2 - AI will become more invisible as AI use cases expand. - I WAS CORRECT! Proof: Why The AI Hype Needs A Reality Check

Prediction 3 - The traditional construct of applications will change; virtual agents will emerge. I NAILED THIS ONE! I WAS CORRECT! Proof: Your Apps Are on Borrowed Time. AI Agents Are on the Way

Prediction 4 - LLMs will create most of the new content, impacting LLM training. I WAS CORRECT! Proof: Artificial Intelligence - Is LLM Training Data Running Out

Prediction 5 - AI will get the headlines, but most of the money will be spent on data management and governance. I WAS NOT CORRECT! I missed this one. Most of the money in 2024 is being spent on infrastructure (cloud infra and Nvidia GPUs), not data management. I expected that more enterprises would be using their own data for AI use cases, but still approximately 99% of the data used is public data and only about 1% of the data is enterprises proprietary data. I anticipate that this will change in 2025 and into 2026, but for now I didn't get this one right.

Prediction 6 - Customers will begin to revolt against subscription only licensing for mission critical investments. UNSURE. Data on this one is hard to come by. The only evidence I could find is Broadcom makes concessions after criticism and extends perpetual VMware support, but this is too narrow an example to validate a broader preference shift in the market.

Prediction 7 - Business will continue to shift from in-person to virtual meetings. I WAS CORRECT! Proof: The Silent Evolution Of Meetings: Hybrid Work’s Impact On Engagement

5 out of 7 isn’t bad. I am most proud of how close I was on prediction 4, AI Agents, and most disappointed that I failed on prediction 5, expecting a faster shift towards enterprise data.

It was a good prediction year for me, but not great.

Leave a comment with what shot you called that you got right. Or even better, what shot are you calling into the year ahead that is against popular opinion?

Good selling.