You Can Articulate!

One of the many things I struggled with in the initial stages of my career was "Articulation"

I've had some really tough times then.

My ideas would be pushed away. The so called "Seniors" would blatantly cut me short in team meetings.

I used to feel so small and sometimes even avoid team meetings all together.

All this even though I was hitting my quota and being the top performer.

It's fair to say that I've come a long way.

I've managed to work directly with Founders. Hold important Team meetings myself.

Be recognised as the "Best Team Player" and what not..

but I still find articulation difficult at times.

Especially, when I'm supposed to answer difficult questions like,

"Hey how did you win that deal?" or "What's the secret to being the Top Performer?" or "How were you able to gain the trust of that prospect?" or "How could you get the prospect to say Yes?"

A while back I had written a post on similar lines, and I had mentioned that

when you're unable to teach someone how you achieved what you've achieved, it's probably coz you're naturally good at it and it's difficult to teach how.

I still believe in it.

But here's another perspective to it -

You needn't teach people the "hows" but you've got to document your progress, even for yourself so you can look back and understand what has worked for you in the past, when you lose track.

And trust me it happens so many times in sales (just like in life). You constantly keep losing track. And you must have something to remind you about your basics.

Pradeep Sridar made me build my first Sales Playbook for Wingman. It was the first time I realised,

If I ever wanted to change the perception of sales, then I can't keep telling myself, "It's probably natural to me"

If sales leaders who've made a real difference in people's lives thought it was all just natural phenomena, we wouldn't be having people we can learn from.

If I ever plan to be a leader, I definitely need to work on articulating and documenting what I believe in and what's worked best for me.

So, this is probably a note to myself 😌

I'm constantly working hard to get better at what I do.

Moving forward, I'll also make sure I document these learnings for all of you.