I have just read this thought provoking blog by my good friend and sales expert George Pastidis.

You get what you measure. Will VAR help sales manager and sales executives around the globe enter the high performance zone?

Have a read below ⚽️

by George Pastidis

The world cup is at its peak and we can hardly avoid thinking in terms of football these days. The Video Assistant Referee system (VAR) is the video technology introduced in football lately for achieving better and more accurate decisions. Either the video referees inform the on-field referee that his decision is under review or the referee himself asks the video referees for a VAR review.

This, like pretty much everything in life, has been received with mixed feelings and reactions. We have the fans of VAR that love the fact that the chances of having an inaccurate call that will result in an unfair result, get very much limited and others that strongly oppose VAR. Football men like Michel Platini that see the flow of the match getting disrupted and the magic of football getting spoiled. The less spontaneous, the less fun.

Can be that I am a little obsessed with sales but I could not resist in thinking the use of VAR there. The use of VAR for having better and more accurate sales calls. The use of VAR for reviewing a business opportunity or a specific sales call and take the necessary actions for advancing the sale. Have a seller sitting together with a sales coach or his leader and have a good coaching review session. They won’t have a video of course. But they can definitely find a way to somehow rewind things, go back, spot the flaws that need to be fixed and the issues that need to be tackled, identify the strengths that should be shared so others can benchmark on, and plan to take next actions and move forward.

We definitely have fans of sales VAR. there is no doubt that we have around us mature sales professionals, sellers and senior sales leaders that are willing to switch on VAR, give and take sales coaching. Are those the majority? I am afraid not. The vast majority of sales people are high achievers, strong communicators with high self-esteem and confidence. Of course there is nothing wrong with these attributes. I wish we all had those. Things start getting off track though when you over-estimate your natural competences and you don’t work on developing further. When you do not seek out coaching. When you neglect to provide coaching to your team members. When you see sales tools like CRM as unnecessary paperwork that keep you away from the sales field. When you resist having VAR in sales.

Things have changed big lately. Buyers are better trained and more informed, profitability matters big, everybody likes playing procurement, and procurement itself gets stronger and stronger. Competition is severe. Relationship building sales cannot fly no more. So yes, good communication skills, sales instinct, high ambition and hard work on the sales field are lovely things but are not enough. Switching on your sales VAR help to make more accurate calls and win more deals.

I am a fan of VAR, in football and sales.