The 5 Requisites For Success

Some background Information:

The National Sales Center recently released it’s new format that starts with Session VII. The old format consisted of a 45-day training session for between 8 and 12 accepted applicants, while the new format consists of a 35-day training session for 16 accepted applicants, followed by a certain number of 30-day selling sessions. At the end of each session, the most distinguished program participants are made available for interviews by Major League Soccer teams, while the rest continue on to the next session until the last session is complete. There are a maximum of three 30-day selling sessions after the initial 35-day training session.

The Sales Center’s structural shift creates 3 levels of competition: One at the end of the initial 35-day training session, one at the end of the first 30-day sales session, and one at the end of the second 30-day sales session (everyone left will likely be interviewed at the end of the third sales session and won’t be competing with other trainees for the right to be interviewed.) The decision of who to graduate after each session is based on sales performance and employment readiness as considered by the National Sales Center’s Director.

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The program’s new format makes it more competitive, but, in the grand scheme of things, being hired to work full-time for a team one month earlier than the other trainees isn’t exactly like winning an Oscar. It is even possible that being ready for full-time employment could be disadvantageous if the team’s that are hiring are not ones that you are particularly interested in. But getting hired is getting hired, and I doubt that any of the program’s participants will be too picky in this regard.

Competition inherently contains strategy. My strategy is to not be afraid, to take my licks and keep on sellin’. Ignorance, in this case, may truly be bliss. If you are reading carefully, you will probably see that this is not really a strategy at all. The rules of the game are still too vague to create a plan for, but while we’re on the topic of games and strategies, I’ll go ahead and throw some numbers your way. Let’s say that the variables for each trainee’s success are: Experience, ability to learn quickly, innate skill, attitude and effort (are these accurate? Yes, absolutely. Am I selling them to you? Yes, absolutely. Are you buying them? You certainly should not.) On a scale of 0-10 here are my scores:

Experience: I did make some cold calls trying to raise money for my elementary school once. It did not go particularly well. Final rating: 0, ehhhhhhhhhh 1.

Quickability: Quickability is a word I just made up. It is defined as the ability to be quick to learn and adjust. This category is a difficult one to judge. From my past, I’ve been fairly quick to pick up certain things, and slow for others. I have always felt quicker than most at understanding rules and strategies for games and puzzles, adjusting to new surroundings and losing my temper at little kids, and slower than most in academic subject matter, reading comprehension and finding appropriate bathrooms when urination is imminent. None of these activities apply here at all, so I’ll just go ahead and put myself right in the middle. Final rating: 5.

Innate Selling Skill: We all know those people, the ones who are naturally intriguing and persuasive. I can safely say that I am not one of them. For me, I think this process will be one of learning by mimicking what others do. At the same time, the sales books that I have read claim that there are very few natural salesmen, that it’s a skill learned through trial, error and humility. I’m pretty sure they’re just selling it. Either way, it was reassuring to hear, and there is hopefully some truth to it. Final rating: 4.

Attitude: This is where I hope to make up some ground. There aren’t many people my age that get up at 7:45 AM on Saturday mornings to watch random English Premier League soccer games live in their living rooms, but I am, somewhat embarrassingly, one of them. To keep a positive attitude, I will need to step back and remember that what I want people to pay for is something that I myself would like to pay for. I think I can do that. Final rating: 8.

Effort: Here’s where things get tricky. What does effort mean? Trainees will be at trainings or selling sessions from 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM every work day. Does maximum effort entail working more hours? Does it mean concentrating on working without distraction each hour of each work day? Perhaps it means working a few hours on weekends? There’s always a line between putting in effort and putting in too much effort. Putting in effort is going the extra mile, while putting in too much effort is going the extra marathon and extra marathons are not good for anyone. For some reason, I feel confident that I’ve learned to tight rope walk that line. Final rating: 6.

Summary: 24 out of a possible 50 points.

Right smack dab in the middle, and I think that’s appropriate. To presume that I am among the best in the class without any evidence of sales success is, well, presumptuous, while presuming that I am near the bottom rungs does not give enough credit to my past non-sales successes .

It’s fun to conjecture about these things, but in the end it’s all for naught. Maybe I’ll be a star, maybe I’ll be a gutter ball. Who knows? What I can do is inhabit the mindset that there is always a way to improve what I do. If I can keep with that motto, than whether I start at the bottom, middle, or top should be irrelevant because my ceiling is a gazillion feet high. Or at least the height the crossbar. 

How It All Began

    The Northwest’s rainy spring season was just starting to creep around the corner. There I was, sitting at a computer owned by Camp Stand-By-Me near Seattle, ¾ of the way through a year in Americorps, the anxiety of re-entering society as an unaware and unemployed college graduate weighing me down like an imminent term paper. At this point in time, there was only one career-related aspect of myself that I was sure of: I was a finance guy. Whatever that meant, I was it. How did I come to this ultimatum? I still don’t know. The lure of money, I guess? Anyways, being a “finance guy” generally requires one to know something about finance, a requirement that I was sorely lacking. Reading over descriptions of open positions at large banks bored me to the point of realizing that something had to change. ‘What did I want to DO?’, I asked myself. ‘WHO could I work for?’ ‘WHAT was my passion?’

 For anyone who knows me, it’s a pretty simple answer: Sports. But the “I like sports” revelation was a deflating one since the only work that I could do in professional sports did not involve running around after a ball. Moreover, it revealed a simple, bland truth about myself that I had known all along. Instead of being interested in topics like politics, the environment or real estate, I was interested in sports. Sweet, dude. My outlet from the triviality of it all was that I specifically felt connected to soccer, the most popular sport in the world and the most unappreciated one in America. I embarked on a journey to find a job with Major League Soccer.     

Okay, “journey” is a bit of a stretch, and “embarked” makes me sound like a Sherpa. In truth, I typed “MLS jobs” into Google and was rewarded with teamworkonline.com, a website devoted to listing available jobs in the sports world. I clicked on the link for MLS jobs, limited the search to “entry-level”, and clicked go. Various internships with both the league and individual teams popped up. Since I was a “finance guy”, I naturally spurned any marketing, PR or sales internships because they didn’t fit my skill set, which was loosely defined as “numbers”. Not that it would have mattered. 6 applications and 20 phone calls later, I still hadn’t made contact with anyone in the league. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t the only one who wanted to work in sports.

Fast forward a year. It’s Monday morning, Spring of 2011. I’m not at work because I have no work to do. Although it’s probably 11 AM, I’ve only been awake for half an hour. I’m sitting at the same computer as I am at right now, browsing through e-mails, still in my PJs. Teamworkonline.com’s biweekly jobs e-mail has just arrived, and I begrudgingly open it up.

I open it up “begrudgingly” because there’s something you need to understand about teamworkonline.com’s biweekly e-mail. Every time it lands in my inbox, a glimmer of hope starts to burn inside my belly. I think, “Maybe, just maybe, I will find the perfect job. Perhaps all of the hard work that lies before me will be dissolved instantaneously.” Then, of course, I read that the San Antonio Spurs are hiring an IT guy, and that flicker of hope gets metaphorically pinched out by a moistened finger and thumb. But every so often, I see a job that excites me. I see a clear vision of myself wearing a casual suit and tie with a briefcase in hand, walking happily towards my desk. There I am, leaning back in my chair, loosening my tie while deep in thought when, suddenly, I jump up, grab the telephone, make a quick call, nod my head a few times, hang up the phone in triumph, lean back just a little farther than before, and settle my feet on top of my desk, a smug, triumphant grin spread across my face. It only lasts a moment, but the vision feels real nonetheless. I immediately click on the job’s hyperlink to apply, but the page loads just slowly enough to let every possible doubt I hadn’t considered before creep into my mind. Why will this application be any different? Is applying to these jobs even worth my time? Should I give up this charade and look for a more realistic opportunity?

On this particular Monday morning, I clicked on my teamworkonline.com e-mail and did, in fact, find a job that piqued my interest: A Sales Training Program with Major League Soccer. But there were two problems: First, I was a finance guy, not a sales guy, and second, the application required a “video elevator pitch”, basically a two-minute presentation of why I deserved a spot in the training program. The first problem was quickly overcome by talking myself into... myself. The conversation went something like this: “Pffft, I could definitely do sales. Finance? I was never really into that... Wait, why am I talking to myself?”  The second problem, the elevator pitch, was not as easily solved, partly because I had no way to videotape myself, but mostly because it scared the bajesus out of me. It dawned on me that I was nervous to talk to a wall for 2 minutes. Probably not a good start to my “sales guy” transition. But in the end, I fought a bloody battle against resume and cover letter procrastination, won it, and plowed ahead with the application.

After a few good hours of work, I sat back in my desk chair and looked hard at my work. I had in front of me a finely-tailored resume, a tight cover letter, and a tidy little speech that detailed why I was the perfect candidate for a position in sales and soccer. I recall being surprisingly impressed at my work, as it was a far cry from the lackadaisical crap I had recently been submitting to companies. But there was still one catch: How would I film myself? I was too embarrassed to ask someone with a digital camera to film me, an emotion that, in hindsight, is embarrassing in itself. I haphazardly set out to borrow a video or digital camera, but found it to be more difficult than I had anticipated. Okay, you caught me, I barely tried. But since my lack of effort exhibited in this particular part of the story doesn’t fit into the whole “work hard and you can accomplish anything” narrative that is mostly preached and rarely practiced, let’s just pretend it never happened. Finding a video camera turned into a task that floated from mental checklist to mental checklist, and then floated clear out of my head. That spring, despite an application that was very nearly complete, I submitted nothing.

Fast forward again. It’s now August of 2011, and I’ve been living and working in New York City for 5 months. It’s warmer on this Monday morning, a product of August’s dog days having just scampered in. I open up Mozilla Firefox, click the link to GMail, and, after a brief scan of new e-mails, find another one from teamworkonline.com. The same mix of excitement and gloom flows back into my chest. Upon opening up the e-mail, I see another listing for Major League Soccer’s Sales Training Program, and slap my forehead and stare at it in disgust. How could I have forgotten about this nearly finished application from six months ago? Yet at the same time, I was excited. I knew that I now possessed the ultimate weapon: An iPhone.

The ol’ iPhone. The machine that “has an app for that.” In this case I didn’t need an app, because it provided exactly what I needed: A camera. Considering that I had written out my elevator pitch six months ago, I assumed that most of the work required to complete the application had was done. As it turns out, it wasn’t.

What is so disconcerting about seeing oneself on camera? More precisely, why is it so difficult to act normally in front of one? One Saturday afternoon, I set apart some time to film myself, and came away 2 hours later with a video that barely crossed the line that separates a satisfactory video from a mortifying one. I read from a piece of paper placed not five feet in front of me, yet produced a video that looks like it was once a part of America’s Funniest Home Videos, but with nothing intentionally funny about it. If someone ranked every homemade video ever made, this one would finish just ahead of “Christmas ‘92 - The Smith’s Go Caroling” in terms of quality, unintentional comedy, and intrigue. It took 50 takes and three outfit changes before I considered it done. Yet, despite it all, I created a video and, in doing so, put into place the jigsaw puzzle’s last piece. My application was complete.

I never really expected to hear anything back. It would add a nice touch to this story to say that the wait was agonizing, but, after submitting the application, I went right on with my normal life: 9-5 job, TV in the evening, sleep, a little soccer on the weekends. Although the video elevator pitch was different, the application and the training program themselves were not a revelation: I had applied to numerous similar jobs over the prior weeks and months, and almost never heard a peep about them afterwards. But, differently, I did hear back, about 2 weeks later. And I did schedule a phone interview for the following Sunday. And I did pace around my living room for 30 minutes during the interview, kicking the ground’s clutter out of my way as I went. And I did get a call the next week asking if I was interested in becoming a member of the training program’s 7th session. And I did say “let’s do it.” Or something like that.

So, in summary, I went from conceptualizing of an MLS job at a camp for children with disabilities in Seattle to being a part-time worker and part-time job applier back home in New Lebanon, NY to having my sister’s dog eat my old cell phone in New York City (which resulted in an iPhone) to being accepted into Major League Soccer’s Sales Training Program.

And that’s my story. I overcame difficult circumstances and tremendous adversity and, with hard work and determination, successfully chased my dream. Right? Eh, not exactly. Realistically, I stumbled around in the dark and grasped at something to hold tight to. But if I wasn’t stumbling around hectically and crashing into things, I don’t think I would have been trying hard enough. Even a blind dog can find a bone every so often. It’s a blessing to be able to see how random and lucky this opportunity was, and I am thankful for that perspective. They say in sports that “it’s better to be lucky than good”, and I couldn’t agree more.