Too Smart for Sales

I read A LOT! Since I got into sales a little over a year ago, I've read about 30 books and 3,000 blog posts on sales and marketing. I am currently attending graduate school for my MBA. I've kept up on Business Week, Fortune, and a number of periodicals specific to my industry. I am a knowledge maven. I thrive on learning. I get a rush from getting a new insight into how to improve myself. The more I know, I reason, the better salesperson I will be...I wish it were that easy.

You see, sometimes, I think I know too much. Sometimes, I think I place too great an emphasis on learning and not enough on application. I know enough to write a nice blog and even to successfully coach other people but, when it's crunch time, I sometimes falter in applying the things I have learned to my own sales behavior. It's easy to be enamored by a revolutionary idea but it's another thing entirely to have enough guts to implement it. I know plenty; it's the implementation that I struggle with.

I've been told that I have too many things going on in my head at once. I read so many different ideas that I can't reconcile them and translate them into cohesive behavior. This could be true. I know that I think way too much. Yet still, I try to justify my endless contemplation. If I am not learning different ideas, then I will never be learning better ideas. I want to learn as many conflicting viewpoints as possible so that the position I take, in the end, will be that much more powerful. That's all fine and good but, if I'm honest with myself, I'll admit that I sometimes just have too much crap swirling around in my head to think straight.

When football players come off the sidelines and attempt to run a, "play," the quarterback doesn't stop thinking about the play. However, his mind is no longer in the playbook; it's on the field. The same goes with salespeople like myself. I need to get my head in the game. When I'm sitting down in front of my client, I want to be engaged in the conversation, not thinking about what I read in that last blog post. Knowledge is good, but it should be foundational. You should not have to think about a sales technique when in front of a client; it should come through naturally. Integrate knowledge into who you are. When you're on the field, it's time to run the play; not to study it.

What about you? Are you like me? Do you read a lot? It's great if you do, but is it a distraction during game time? Do you have your head in the game? Are you engaged in conversation? Don't over-think it. Don't be too smart for sales.