Who packed your Parachute

Captain Charles Plumb was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, ‘ You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!

‘How in the world did you know that?’ asked Plumb.

‘I packed your parachute,’ the man replied.

Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude.

The man pumped his hand and said, ‘I guess it worked!’

Plumb assured him, ‘It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.’

Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, ‘I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘Good morning, how are you?’ or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.’

Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silk of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, ‘Who’s packing your parachute?’ Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory – he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

As Sales Professionals, while we are busy working with our clients, there is a big team supporting and providing required insights.

1) The marketing team provides the leads, builds the brand presence ( which makes life easy for sales)

2) The customer research team provides all that is required to know about the customer.

3) The Channel Partners who could be connected with the customer and can provide the account dynamics

4) The Finance team can give you data related to customer financial health

5) The Implementation team can provide experience from earlier implementation & potential hotspot

6) The Presales Team providing the technical know-how and support for handling customer needs

and so on......

This can be a long list of teams providing support to the sales team, enabling sales to be armed with rich data & insights before they even meet the customer.

So, next time you close a deal, Remember - There is an army behind you that made this victory possible. It is their flawless work, which ensured your preparedness for your sales opportunity ( I am not taking away the work that is put in by the salesperson to close the deal )

Many a time, we end up missing/overlooking/ignoring the work done by others in the organization due to sheer ignorance, thinking of those work as petty work, or the way we think about our role. Nevertheless, these "small & petty" work add up to ensure the final success of the objective which affects you and the organization at large

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason.

 As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.