Infantry sergeant Zach Selch compares a WWII story where a lieutenant's reckless order got a soldier killed to how CEOs from non-sales backgrounds issue directives that sabotage their sales teams. Protecting frontline salespeople from bad top-down decisions keeps them motivated and drives revenue.
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What's your favorite part about being a dad? A long time ago, about 30 years ago when I was a kid, when I was a kid, I was an infantry or a paratroop sergeant, both a drill sergeant and a platoon sergeant. And one of the principles that I was trained on and one of the principles that I tried to embrace was to really protect my men from stupid mistakes that came down from the top. I learned this from one of my sergeants, and I thought he made it up. I thought this was his rule. But as I've grown up and I've read a lot more and I understand more about military theory and leadership theory, I understand that there's a whole concept behind this that makes perfect sense, right? It wasn't something that we just made up. And I read this story this week, which was really interesting, as part of a military theory and leadership book. And it talked about this case in Japan where there was a whole essentially brigade, about 1,000 US infantrymen lined up. And as these things sometimes happen, there were really just 3 to 6 people at the very, very front. And the Japanese were very well entrenched. They were dug in, and they were holding everybody down with machine guns. And the, you know, 6 infantrymen with rifles, these poor 19-year-old riflemen at the very front, had no tools to move forward. And they knew it. And behind them was their company, about 60 to 90 guys, and behind them was their battalion, about 600 to 700 guys, and behind them was the rest of the brigade. And so the lieutenant— so the general and the leadership of this whole group basically reached out to the front and said, keep moving, we need to move forward, whatever happens, move forward. And the captain told the lieutenant, and the lieutenant ran forward and he said to the 3 guys at the front, he goes, you have to move forward. And this 19-year-old kid said, as soon as I stand up, I'm going to be killed. The lieutenant said, the general says you have to get up and move forward. The kid said, the general knows that I'm going to die. Literally, he said this in front of— about a company of people could hear the kid saying this. The lieutenant said, the general said get up and move. The kid got up, did what he was supposed to do, started firing, started running. Boom, he was dead within a second. About 100 people saw this, and for days they couldn't get any Anybody else to stand up, right? Because they said, nobody cares about me, the leadership's making mistakes, and I'm going to get killed. Now, how does that pertain to us? Now, what I find, to be perfectly honest, it's in the past 30 years, I can only think of about 2 years where I've actually had a boss that had come from sales, right? Typically, the nature of my job is such that I've been Either the top person in the company or almost the top person in the company in terms of sales and marketing, and my bosses then come from general management. They've come from engineering. They've come from R&D. They've come from manufacturing. They've come from finance. But they don't really understand sales, and very often they make mistakes. Some of those mistakes are pretty harmless. Some of those mistakes are really stupid. And if we just pass these mistakes on down, right? What happens with salespeople is they say, "Okay, this." This mistake cost me days and days away from my family. This mistake cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, which translates into thousands of dollars worth of actual revenue. This sale has cost me this project. This mistake has cost me this project. This mistake has cost me this. They translate the mistakes into what this actually costs them in terms of time away from home, extra work, money lost. And then they look at it and say, well, if If headquarters doesn't care about me, if my boss doesn't care about me, then maybe I should waste a little bit of time. Maybe I should take up a hobby. Maybe I should spend a little bit more time at home with my family and not kill myself quite so hard, right? Protecting your men or protecting your team from mistakes is key to making sure they stay engaged and they end up doing what you want them to do. 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.
