What winning actually means to me
A director asked how my team would show up, and what winning looks like. The honest answer is that it was never the scoreboard.
A director asked me a question today that I have not stopped thinking about:
How will you and your team show up? What does winning mean to you? What does winning look like to you?
Most people answer that with numbers. A quota, a rank, a record month. I get why. Numbers are easy to say out loud and easy to celebrate. But that is not where my head goes anymore, so here is the real answer.
Winning is not the scoreboard
Winning to me is not the scoreboard. The scoreboard is just the byproduct.
Winning is who we become on the way there. There is a line I keep coming back to:
Great teams don't rise to their goals. They fall to their systems.
So we build the system first. If the system is good, the numbers show up on their own. If the system is broken, no amount of pushing on a single month will fix it. You will just be tired and back at zero on the first.
Coach behaviors, not plans
For me this comes down to coaching behaviors. Not plans. Not promos. Behaviors.
The strongest version of this is every rep treating themselves like their own business and owning that fully. Their pipeline. Their follow-ups. Their learning. Their bad days. When someone runs their patch like it is theirs, you do not have to manage them. You get to coach them, which is a completely different and much better job.
The test is when you are not there
You know the system is working when a customer comes back, gets helped by someone else on the team, and the experience is damn near the same.
That is the whole thing. When the quality does not depend on which person walks up, you have built something real. That is not a person anymore. That is the standard you created. A standard outlives a good month. A person having a good month does not.
None of it works without each other
And none of it works if we do not show up for each other first.
Believe in the person. Coach the craft. Notice when someone is off and actually say something. And when someone wins, say it loud.
Not every sale is going to be the perfect stacked deal, and that is okay. That is exactly where the coaching lives. You break down the pitch, you talk through what went sideways, and then the most important part, the part almost everyone skips: you follow up. Follow-up is where average teams and great teams split.
What winning looks like
So here is my real answer to the director.
Winning looks like a team that would run through a wall for each other. Getting a little better every day. Doing work we are proud to put our name on.
The number will come. It always does when the standard is right. But the number was never the point. The team we become getting there is.