Zach Selch breaks down why strategy isn't spreadsheets or Sun-Tzu quotes, then walks through Rick Page's Hope Is Not a Strategy as a practical playbook for sales leaders. He's used it to generate millions in revenue and says it works whether you manage 8 people or a large account team.
Chapters
Hi, I'm in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. I always have trouble pronouncing the name of the Moscow airports. DME. DME typically is what I refer to it as. And I wanted to talk a little bit about strategy and about a book about strategy. And my feeling is most people don't understand strategy, and that's fine because most people don't work in strategy. But some people do work in strategy and still think they understand strategy and don't. I can think of somebody I worked with whose title was the Vice President of Strategy and had an MBA and probably couldn't have strategized his way out of a wet paper bag with a jackhammer and a chainsaw because he was tied up thinking about Excel sheets and numbers and how that impacted strategy. And Excel sheets and numbers are tools that people who do strategy need. That isn't strategy. On the flip side of that, I know somebody who was into Sun Tzu and would read and study Sun Tzu, but he didn't understand any of it. He would talk about it like it was poetry without getting to the meat. And that brings me to Hope Is Not a Strategy by Rick Page. I read this book probably 15 years ago and have— I was just rereading it since. It is a fantastic book. If you've worked with me, you've probably heard me quote him or say things or do things that come up in the book without actually crediting him or mentioning it because I forgot really. It was so long ago I forgot where I learned them, but I've embraced a lot of the stuff that is in this book. If you're dealing with somebody, if you're just getting into strategy, or you want to get into strategy, or you lead a small sales team, or you lead a big sales team, but you feel maybe you don't understand strategy well enough, or even an account team, okay, anything that involves getting to a goal that takes step after step, bringing together resources, bringing together a team and moving forward. This is a great book to understand basic strategy in a practical sense. How you can— you can take this book and 90% of the stuff in it you can use tomorrow. Okay, that's how good a book it is. And it deals with the type of stuff especially relevant for either small team selling or big accounts. And when I say small, I'm not talking about, you know, $50 here or there. I'm talking about, you know, when you're dealing with 8 or 10 or 15 or 25 people and you have to get them to work together and have to put resources to try and achieve long-term goals, and you have to bring in midterm goals that you can leverage to bring in those long-term goals. For my money, that's strategy, and that's what you're going to learn with this book. Yeah, there are some really— I could go through 20 different points here that I've picked up in the book that I use, and I use virtually on a daily basis, including some really small things that have been very helpful for me and some really big things that have helped me generate millions and millions of dollars in revenue over the years. So again, Hope Is Not a Strategy. Aside from everything else, the name, it's the best named book. I think on the business book shelf. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
