During the last month, I had the chance to watch on Netflix an American sports documentary called “The Last Dance”.  This mini-series of ten episodes does a flashback in the career of Michael Jordan, who is considered by many people and (myself included), the best basketball player ever.  The series also focuses on the Chicago Bulls, Jordan’s team, and mainly on his last season with them (1997-1998), in which they became NBA Champions for the sixth and last time, within a period of 8 years. 

The Bulls not only had the best player in the league, they also had a great team featuring among others Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Horace Grant and Tony Kukoc.  They also hired Phil Jackson as their coach, who won six championships with the Bulls and five more with the L.A Lakers during the 00’s.

Watching the show, I could not help comparing the Bulls to a well-organised and very successful sales organization, since I thought that I found many similarities.  There was the star-player of the team (Jordan), surrounded by other successful and talented professionals, led by a manager/coach (Jackson) who has been for many years out in the field (twice a champion as a player) and was able to inspire his team and to unleash its’ full potential.

Apart from being hugely talented, Jordan had a mindset that is also required for a successful salesperson.  He was fully dedicated, extremely focused, tremendously self-confident and always hungry to win.  Despite that, I believe that his greatest attribute was that despite knowing that he was the best, he was the most hard-working of all, according to his former teammates, always setting the example for the rest. 

In my view, if there was one thing that we could learn from Jordan is exactly that: he did not just rely on his undisputable talent, but he combined this talent with hard work throughout his career, in order to become the best player ever.      

There is a saying that salespeople are born and that some sort of a talent is required, in order to do this job.  Although I mostly believe that this is not the case and that most people can do anything if they work hard, someone with “natural” selling ability and the proper casting (training, coaching, hard work), can become truly successful.  If the right artist gets the right canvas and the right subject to paint, then magic can really occur. 

Back to the “Last Dance”, since the Bulls had the best player, surrounded from top-rated teammates and one of the best coaches in the league, therefore how could they not be successful?  The answer is that they did not rely only on the above. 

During their reign years, the Bulls were also famously known for their “Triangle Offense”, a system that was used whenever they were on the attack, and which through countless hours in practice they have developed to perfection, since it was rigorously executed from all the players that were on the court.  Although a “less-celebrated” pillar, this system undoubtedly played a significant role in their success.

The equivalent of the triangle offense in a sales organisation, would be the execution of a sales process.  No matter if you have the best talented and hard-working salespeople, led by an inspirational sales leader, you still need to develop a sales process that will be executed from all the members of the team, no matter how successful they are considered to be. 

In modern salesforces, sales processes are imperative in order to build strong foundations for a successful future.