“Observe, Orient, Decide and then Act.” – Scott Ingram in today’s Tip 1058
What is your thought about this?
Join the conversation below and check out the links!
Scott Ingram on LinkedIn
The OODA Loop and the Half-Beat
The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I want to talk about adapting and OODA loops. What I’m about to talk about is widely applicable, whether you’re looking at a massive territory change, you need to shift gears to focus on building more pipeline, or for some, it might be helpful in deciding if you should consider a different role or even a different company to sell for.
Having interviewed over 130 #1 and top 1% performing sales professionals on my Sales Success Stories Podcast and dozens through the pandemic, I can tell you that those who consistently thrive, regardless of the situation they find themselves in are incredibly adaptable. You’ll probably hear me talk about the specifics of this at some point, but I just made one of the biggest pivots of my life and the early results have been incredible.
As with most things it starts with mindset. You might even just need to tell yourself that you’re adaptable. For my team and I here at Sales Success Media, we’ve learned over time that just about any obstacle or challenge can be an opportunity to make something bigger and better. So do a quick head check first, and then I want to introduce you to my friend OODA if you haven’t already met her.
Ok, OODA isn’t actually a person. It’s an acronym. It was developed by fighter pilots and stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act and it’s typically described as an OODA Loop, because you repeat this process over and over again.
If you’ll click over to DailySales.Tips/1058 I’ve got links to a couple of more detailed pieces about this, but let me talk about these components from my perspective.
Observe is all about trying to really understand at a high level what’s really going on. I’ll throw another O in the mix here and suggest that you try to be Objective. Try to understand the situation without getting emotional about it.
Next is Orient. Once you’ve observed the broader landscape I think of this as understanding your position in it. What parts can you control? I constantly find myself going back to my friend Dave Schwartz’ bullseye analogy to consider the few things at the very center that I can either directly control or wield significant influence over.
Once you have that perspective come what I believe are the most important parts. First, you have to Decide. Given the available information and knowing what you can potentially control. What are you going to DO? This is where I think a lot of people get stuck. They just churn and go round and round without actually making a decision. If you don’t decide you’re probably not in motion and you need to keep moving.
Once you do decide though, then you can Act. Thinking is great, I’m a big fan, but nothing happens unless you actually doing something. So it’s all about making that decision and then getting into action.
Personally, I’m not as big a fan of the loop piece. If you’re constantly going through this process I think it’s akin to the spin and the churn that I just described. I think you need to act for some period of time so that you can start to collect enough real-world data to either validate your decision in which can you can probably just keep going OR if things aren’t working the way you expected then you can start the process again. Just be sure to execute enough actions to collect enough data.
From a prospecting perspective, this might be making a decision about a new approach you’re going to take with your outreach. You can’t make 3 attempts, not get any results and decide it’s not working. You might have to try 50 or 100 times before you begin to have any idea whether or not your actions are going to drive meaningful results or not.
Again, I don’t know how this might apply in your life right now, but give it a try. Observe, Orient, Decide and then Act. Then let me know how it goes. I always love hearing from you.
There are lots of ways to connect with me and those links and links to the OODA Loop articles at DailySales.Tips/1058
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!