Andy Neary draws on a brief professional baseball career to teach sales execution lessons. Using the pitcher’s needs—mechanics, pitch selection, and follow-through—he maps those to what salespeople/brokers need: confidence, competence, and a clear course of action. He also warns that adopting C-suite language requires context and that coaching brokers involves more than vocabulary.
Chapters
And here's the thing, guys. In baseball.
You can teach mechanics.
You can teach delivery, you can't teach accuracy.
And so my career in pro ball only lasted two years. In fact, I remember going to spring training after my second year, and on the last day of spring training, I got released. I got cut. And the interesting thing about that guy you talked about, you guys have all had childhood dreams, right? I was one day away from breaking camp to go play for the Beloit Snappers in Beloit, Wisconsin, which was 50 miles from my hometown. And I was three promotions away from pitching for the Milwaukee Bird, 30 miles from where I grew up. You talk about a childhood dream, right? And it was over. And when I look back and I reflect on that day I got released. I learned a lesson that day, and I, unfortunately didn't learn it right away. But what I know now is, guys, when you want to play bigger.
You have got to have the confidence, the competence, and one hell of a course of action.
Because for me as a pitcher, to be accurate, to throw that first strike, which keeps me in the game, keeps me getting out and keeps me having a job, it comes down to mechanics, pitch selection, and follow through.
So that is what we're going to talk about today. Now, whenever I put these talks together, I always think about what can I say on the stage that the audience wants to hear? But I don't think that does you justice. I like talking about things you need to hear. You're talking about what our prospects need to hear. I call these the hashtag truths. Guys, in my new role right now with coaching, it's been fun. I am talking to a lot of brokers around the country right now. And when you think about what I just said, the mechanics, the pitch selection and the follow through, I'm making some observations right now around the industry that I want to reflect on. If you guys are cool with this.
With this new movement to the C suite, we gotta be careful.
It's great to have this new language, but we have to have context around it. You can't walk into an office and say, I want to talk about your Ibrahim.
Because I'm waiting for a CFO to go, yeah, tell me about my ebitda. And all of a sudden, we have no response for that. We gotta be careful, guys. You have to have context behind this language. It is a game changer. The second observation is what I see right now. And I think you guys struggle with this. We all struggle with this, is in playing bigger right now. How many of you are going, okay, I need to open more doors, bigger accounts. I need to have the confidence to know what to say when that bigger door is open. And then when I win it, how do I keep it? And that's a challenge. I see right now we're winning business with the right language, but you've got to execute.
