Our family is nuts about sports in general but particularly about basketball. Two of our four kids play basketball year round. When they’re not playing on school teams, they’re playing on tournament teams that can take them anywhere from Las Vegas to Atlanta on a given weekend.

This weekend my son was in Los Angeles for the Slam N Jam high school spring leagues. It’s amazing to see so many naturally gifted athletes who are capable of slam dunking or rejecting a shot 9 rows back into the stands. Even more amazing is how poor these same players are at many of the fundamentals of the game, especially on defense. That’s probably because what they do most during warm up is practice shooting NBA 3 pointers or slam dunking the ball.

The same things can be said of some very talented people in our industry. They take their natural abilities with people, combine them with things they learned "on the street", and dazzle the management (and other team members) with their occasional ability to slam the door on a huge deal or “reject” a customer concern with a patented answer to an objection. But while these things may generate a lot of oooh’s and ahhh’s, a slam dunk only count for two points and the fancy rejection just gives the ball back to the opponent.

And let’s not forget about TEAM, ASSISTS and DEFENSE. Again I’m amazed at how many of these talented kids can be so bad at the little things that don’t always get the attention of the crowd. Things like encouraging another player who might be having a bad day. Or making sure your inventory and all your selling tools are in order BEFORE a customer arrives. I consider this similar to getting back on defense which, again, most players are too lazy to do.

You might be a naturally gifted people person or a quick wit who can respond at will to most customer concerns. But are you the best you could be? As a manager, do you promote and glorify just those who slam home the big deals? Or do you encourage those who may not be as naturally gifted, but offer many of the fundamentally sound things that are required for a TEAM to succeed?

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