Sales and The Imitation Game

Whenever I hear someone say they could never be in sales, I laugh. If you could never be in sales, you could never do anything.

This weekend, I saw the movie The Imitation Game. It was a WWII thriller based on the life of Alan Turing, who led the charge to break and decode the German secret code dubbed “Enigma” in WWII.

Turing was a mathematical genius who had trouble relating to people. His gift for offending people was as formidable as his gift for math. Although he was the last person you could ever imagine making a sale, he made two sales when he had to – he sold his idea to Winston Churchill and he sold his team on his process.

When he realized that the team, its goals and its leadership were off and needed fixing, Turing was originally rejected. His superior said to get the process going in his direction he’d have to go all the way to Winston Churchill to give his blessing.

What did Turing do? He wrote Churchill what must have been a very persuasive letter and was given authority to run the project his way. He immediately fired two people and offended the rest of the team, but he succeeded in getting the team to move in a new direction. Talk about an effective sales letter.

Later, when the process he was directing was taking longer than expected to produce results and crack the German code, Turing was saved from being fired when his team, who initially hated him, defended him and saved him and his ideas from their demise.

The team agreed to pool their talents and efforts and eventually succeeded. This is an outstanding example of internal marketing. If your team believes in you and the idea, you can move mountains. If not, your results will be rubble.

Sell on, players; especially if you don’t think you have to. Nobody will settle for a pale imitation.

If you want to discuss achieving sales goals and internal marketing, drop me a note at jhenke@henkeinc.com.

Thanks.