Zach Selch compares Ulysses S. Grant's Civil War leadership to modern sales management. Grant fired bad hires and worked around ineffective staff, pushed his team into the field, and ran parallel operations instead of waiting for perfect plans. The same moves work for sales managers stuck with weak teams or slow processes.
Chapters
So I'm a huge fan of Grant. I think he was probably one of the greatest Americans and certainly the greatest Civil War general. And I love his strategy and his grasp of territory and his ability to really finish the war. And we know that he was a horrible businessman, so I can't say, oh, you know, if Grant went into business, he probably would have done fantastically, because 'Cause we know historically that isn't the case. But he was a great manager, a great leader. He had a fantastic grasp of strategy and tactics. And there are a few things that I really identify with him. So first of all, he came in after 5 people had totally screwed up. And they looked on paper like they were great. And I'm sure that was incredibly frustrating for him. And that's been my career all the time. You know, people hire people to be international sales managers who really aren't good fits for it. They may look good on paper, or there's some reason you think they're gonna be a good fit. And then they come in, and my career has been made sort of finishing up where people really haven't been able to do that. And I know a lot of people who are in exactly that position because it's really hard to choose the right person to be an international sales manager. Secondly, he came in and he had these horrible generals under him, mostly political appointees, friends of people, that kind of thing. And he had to get rid of them before he could really win the war. And, and that very often is the case when you come in as a sales leader. Sometimes you're saddled with an existing team of horrible people, of people who really can't do their jobs. I once had a woman work for me who— report to me who was the CEO's sister, and I couldn't get rid of her, and she couldn't do her job, and it was a very frustrating situation. And this happens very often, and you have to work around it. You have to figure out how you can get the most out of people, or maybe squeeze them out, or replace them, and how you go about doing that as quickly as possible so that you can Get the job done. Thirdly, one of the problems he dealt with was momentum, getting people to move. And think about that with sales all the time. One of the biggest problems you have as a sales manager is getting people to go out and do their job because there's so many things that scare salespeople and get them stuck to their desks, that get them stuck from going out and closing business. And that's a big part of what we do is trying to get our people out and doing their job. And again and again in the Civil War, you'd have generals who were scared to move forward, who were scared. Now, I can understand that there are actually some historical reasons for that. The technology had just changed, so the weapon that the defenders were using actually had a much higher range than it had 50 years before. And I can understand it was dangerous, but it wasn't so dangerous that when Grant finally got people who had that momentum, who were willing to charge, they were able to win. And fourth, what Grant experienced a lot of times was he would say to people, okay, I need you to do this mission. And they would say, I need more troops. I need more time. I need more preparation. I need more training. I need this. I need this. I need that. I can't do what you're telling me to do. And I see this all the time with distributors. Bad distributors, you say, okay, we need to go out and we actually need to start selling now. And they'll say, well, we have a process. First, we're gonna do registration. And once we're done with the registration, Then we're gonna put together our marketing material. Once we're done putting together our marketing material, then we'll start training. And once we're done our training, then we'll start getting people out in the field. And that'll be 9 months or a year before we get our first sales meeting going. And when people tell me that's their process, I get rid of them. I say that, that isn't the type of person I need. People out there, because we're gonna miss a year of potential sales. We have to work in parallel. We have to find systems that allow us to get people out in the field selling and not just sitting around and waiting for things. 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.
