the birds, the bees and the flowers up the wall!

Just the other day someone asked me if I’d heard about Vertical Farming. I said I had but wasn’t too thrilled about it.

“Why?” he exclaimed surprised.
“Uh, because it is trying to correct a problem originally created by ourselves.”
“How is that? Doesn’t it make sense that people will not have to go far out of the cities to get their needs filled?”
“That does make sense but it is a stop-gap solution. The question that we really need to ask ourselves is what has driven us to live in such tall structures, what has driven us to live in such a congested manner and what has driven us humankind to be one of the largest numbers of inhabitants on earth?”

The truth is that we have really overcrowded the earth. There are billions of us digging into the crust of the planet, ‘de-treeing’ the forests and ‘dam-ming’ the rivers and the oceans in the name of progress. We are converting everything into wrought iron, plastic and mortar and then piercing it into the heart of the earth and erecting structures which shoot miles into the sky in defiance of nature and natural forces. We call them skyscrapers and we think that is “oh' so smart of us as a civilization.” How far away is that kind of thinking compared to inventing electric saws to chop down trees or throwing sticks of dynamite into the ocean so the fish will pop out of it dead and murdered.

Every time we as a race and as a society have taken a decision we have believed it to be the smartest decision ever. When we split open an atom we thought that was a scientific breakthrough until it was also used as atom-bomb to kill thousands. When we conquered the oceans we believed that to be an achievement until the waste and spills from our tankers began to poison every single inhabitant that lived in the waters. We are thrilled at being able to fly from one continent to another at breakneck speed not realising that that just gets us doing the digging, the de-treeing and the dam-ming much faster and much more globally. Somebody has to just stop and ask. ‘Why? Where are we going with all this activity? What is the higher purpose? What is the universal vision?

Is our long-term goal to be the most populated species on earth? Is our purpose to smelt plastic, metal and mortar into horrendously vertical constructions, pump up the rivers onto the 141st floor so we can wash our hands after nibbling on frog-legs and celery plucked from the farm next door? Einstein was wrong when he helped us unleash nuclear power but he was right when he said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Mankind’s intentions are essentially good but mankind’s decision making is dependant only on the intellectual, emotional resources available to it from the environment and that which is true in the present moment. All wisdom is gained in hindsight by connecting the dots backwards. Very rarely have we practiced creativity and creative thinking which is not demand driven, which is not circumstantial and reactive.

I am not offering answers because I do not have any. I am just raising questions and inviting caution before we coerce our flowers and fauna to scramble up on horrendously vertical skyscrapers. I am inviting long-tem concern, thinking in systems and a refrain from applauding our own thinking and actions before we drive the birds, the bees and the flowers up the wall again!

Why Coaching Sales Creates Champions

Though early on in my career I did not get any sales specific training I was fortunate to intern under several successful sales champions. My mentors had learned their skills through the school of hard knocks and over a long period of time. Mentoring me, though, was far from their minds and all they really cared was if I made enough sales and if my success at sales put money into their coffers. Amazingly though, and such is life, I picked up a million little lessons from them which over time gave me an uncanny and an unfair advantage over many sales people and endeared me to my clientele and the market I played in. The learning was in-depth and the growth was exhilarating and long lasting. Years into the profession, when side by side with my mentors I had developed an uncanny and subtle set of playing rules which almost always helped me close deals and serve my clients consistently and to the benefit of both sides.

Over time, I realized that the art of selling was not just an art but an extremely refined science. The rules of this science, in the past, were learned through by getting into the pit again and again. Today, the culture of learning through long and strenuous interactions over a l o n g period of time does not need to be continued. It still has its benefits but keeping in mind the principle of “Anything can be accomplished if the task is broken down into small enough steps,” from the school of Nuero Linguistics Programming, a sales leader can transfer these uncanny and subtle set of playing rules to almost anyone willing to learn and wanting to make a success out of his sales career.

Across the world trainers and sales consultants like me have now packaged these playing rules into principles and practices which can be mastered in a matter of months if not weeks. Gone are the days when a successful sales person or a team leader would get on stage and boost the spirits of his teams through stories and admonitions towards sales success. Today, the name of the game is Sales Coaching—and, it is potent and powerful in real time and in measurable terms.
Sales Coaching brings about a multitude of benefits at the individual, the team and the organisational level.

At the individual level, sales coaching starts with the assumption that if you can dream it then you can achieve it. This becomes an extremely powerful a paradigm for the sales person because it starts with the belief in her potentiality, its helps unleash her latent strengths and it helps her leverage on her own past successes no matter what field or discipline she comes from. Sales coaching, at the individual level, instead of imposing the manager’s or the organizations belief systems on the salesperson helps her uncover her own driving values. It help her fine tune her skills in complete alignment with her own beliefs and potential.

At the team level, Sales Coaching, helps distribute work load and challenges based on personal preferences and competencies of each player. It helps teams eliminate links which may be weak and move from strength to strength to strength. Steven Covey highlights this synergy of strengths by creating a metaphor of loading a single wooden plank with a measured downward pressure, followed by laying another layer of a wooden plank on the first one. The downward pressure and weight thus carried by two wooden planks not just doubles in tandem to the number of planks but increases multi-fold. Such is the power of Sales Coaching for a team. It strengthens each player individually and then bonds them together with their strengths thus reducing team weaknesses. At the practical level, a manager-cum-coach can assess individual strengths and assign tasks and territories to build on strengths instead of just logistical and market demands.

At the organizational level, Sales Coaching helps in the following ways:

• Essential knowledge and organization culture is retained and enhanced in the process.
• Employee engagement and thus retention peaks up because of increased performance and satisfaction.
• Alignment of personal, team and organizational goals are constantly aligned thereby boosting rapid and sustainable growth.


In summary, the business of old-fashioned sales training has taken on a new and a vibrant face. Instead of sweeping statements about successes and successful behaviour during sales it now is a fine-tuned, highly refined and custom made one on one learning. It is not just faster, better and cheaper but it is also creative, conscientious and constructive. A well-designed sales coaching program addresses the needs of individuals, teams and organization in the areas of culture, processes, characters, visions, and competencies. A well designed sales coaching program also provides knowledge, skills and true wisdom for playing well in the pits, where the true action is.