“You need to be willing to sacrifice some really important things, some things that you might see as really good in order to accomplish the great, which ultimately is checkmate, in that case.” – DeJuan Brown in today’s Tip 1324
Are you playing pinball, checkers, or chess?
Join the conversation below and go check out the links!
DeJuan Brown on LinkedIn
DeJuan Brown on Sales Success Stories Interview
Career Games Panel: Debe Rapson, Camille Clemons, DeJuan Brown
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. For today’s Throwback Thursday tip I pulled a clip from a panel discussion at the 2019 Sales Success Summit focused on Managing Your Sales Career. This has been an ongoing conversation every year at the Summit, but Jack Wilson specifically called out this session and DeJuan’s comments in some mentoring work he was doing so I thought I’d bring it back and surface it for you here. Give a listen:
Scott Ingram: DeJuan came up with the title. Because I was like, I don’t know what to call this thing. Is this a problem? I don’t know what this is. I don’t have a good term for it. And we really just decided, let’s just talk about the management of your career. And it really is kind of think of it as the long game. And what sort of a long game are you playing? And DeJuan let you maybe articulate kind of this level a little bit more in terms of the pinball, checkers, or chess component.
DeJuan Brown: Okay. Actually, I think you did a phenomenal job of sort of articulating your ideas around these games. But for me, it’s just like the ultimate understanding between pinball, checkers, and chess. I mean, they’re all sort of games and you play them for different reasons, and you have different ends in mind and different methodology for how you accomplish what would appear to be a win, right?
So for me, the initial one is checkers versus chess. When you think about checkers, it’s like the accumulation of pieces, is really important to the outcome of the game, and you’re really careful about what you lose, what you retain. Whereas in chess, it’s the strategic understanding that you’re going to have to lose some pieces in order to gain an advantage on the board, right? So the goal is to control the center of the board, and that looks differently. So I may give up knights, and depending on my skill level, I might give up a queen in order to accomplish checkmate. And so it’s just an entirely different mindset. You have to be several stages ahead or several steps ahead in chess in a way that’s different than how far ahead you need to be in checkers, right? Or you need to be willing to sacrifice some really important things, some things that you might see as really good in order to accomplish the great, which ultimately is checkmate, in that case.
Pinball is still a game, and I know people who play pinball religiously and they have real strategy in their mind, but ultimately you’re out of control, right? You’re at the mercy of where the ball is going to go, but you still have some thought to it. And then depending on where you are in your life, it depends on how much you can afford to play either of these games. Right? So I’ll be full disclosure, and I’m actually proud of it just because of where I’m from, but I’ll be 45 in January. I really don’t have time to play pinball, right? I have to be a little bit more strategic with the things that I do and the career moves that I make.
Checkers. I played that for a very long time and thought that it was about accumulation of pieces. So I literally have a picture from around 2012 ish where I have all of these awards that I wanted into it across my 12-year career there. And that was my thing, right? That’s the accumulation of pieces. But my career wasn’t progressing in the way that I wanted it to. And so then in my late 30s, I decided that it was time to make a shift to chess and be more strategic and thoughtful. And not only do I have to surround myself and think through how do I control the middle of the board, but I also have to think about like, who are the rooks and who are the bishops, and who are the pawns, and do I have relationships with any of them? And how can we work together to accomplish mutual goals and benefit one another and help one another and serve one another. So that we can better position ourselves on whatever board we’re playing on. So I don’t know if that was.
Scott Ingram: And that’s how you come up with a title. Ladies and gentlemen,
Scott Ingram: For a link to the video with the rest of this conversation with some additional brilliance and wisdom from Deb Rapson and Camille Clemons, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1324. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!