Revitalising the Winning Spirit
What I brought home from Redmond
I spent some time at Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond recently. I toured the Cyber Crime Center, among other things, and the execs from the Microsoft Alumni Network were extraordinary hosts. They take a network of tens of thousands of people across the world and make it feel like a small family.
On the plane home, I thought about my own years there. We were beasts. We chased the number aggressively, through adversity that should have broken us, and quarter after quarter, we made it. What stayed with me, thirty thousand feet up, was the feeling of it. We had the energy of a winning sports team. We loved winning, and nothing was going to stop us.
Then I thought about Blacfox, and I spotted a gap.
Blacfox is a marketing agency. But we are a B2B go-to-market agency, so we live right next to sales, and in truth we overlap into it. We have even launched a sales desk for our clients, so we are a sales agency too, if such a thing exists. Here is what I have come to believe: a marketing team without a sales culture will never achieve what it could. So I sat down and wrote out every part of what makes a winning sales culture. I put it in a charter, twenty principles that say, plainly, how we sell and why. I believe in it enough that we are now organising all of Blacfox around it, from recruitment to performance management. Here is what it says.
Start with the one thing
Every good charter hangs from a single point. Ours is the north star: everything we do leads to one thing, the sale of our clients’ products. No matter how complex the work becomes, that is the only star we steer by.
That sounds obvious until you watch how often teams lose it. The campaign wins an award and sells nothing. The deck is beautiful and moves no one. Activity becomes the goal, and the sale becomes a happy accident. A north star is what stops the drift. When you are not sure what to do next, you do the thing that leads to the sale.
Ownership: if not me, then who?
The first principles are about responsibility, and they ask more of you than a normal job does. In most roles you own your own work. In sales and marketing, you own something larger. You take responsibility for the decisions your prospect makes about their own success. That is a strange and heavy thing to accept, and I love it. I love that the work lets me influence the choices people make about their own prosperity.
The next one is about targets. A target is a firm commitment. When we give our word, we mean it. I have written before about why targets matter and why they are not the enemy of good work, in The Truth About Targets. The short version: a number you have truly committed to changes how you behave long before the month is over.
Listening: sell on need, and love the objection
Here is where the charter comes closest to everything I write about. Three principles sit under listening. We are sincerely curious. We sell on need, and nothing else. And we value objections.
Curiosity here is the honest desire to understand what the prospect actually needs before you say a word about what you sell. Marketing creates demand by speaking to a market’s need. Selling is the patient work of positioning to one person’s need until buying becomes the obvious next step. We sell on need. Only need.
This is the chain I keep coming back to: income comes from value, value comes from understanding, and understanding comes from listening. I laid it out in Listening Is Power. Everything good downstream depends on what you take in first.
And objections? We welcome them. A prospect who raises none has usually checked out. An objection is a door left open. It tells you exactly where the doubt lives, which is exactly where your next sentence needs to go. So we listen to every objection, acknowledge it honestly, and answer it without flinching.
Positioning is the whole game
If I had to bet a business on a single principle, it would be this one. To sell anything well, you have to position it so it is deeply relevant to the person in front of you. When the value lands, when it rings true for them specifically, they buy. That is the natural result of understanding someone well enough to show them something that genuinely fits.
So our entire workflow runs backward from that one goal: positioning so relevant that saying yes feels obvious and saying no feels strange. It is also why content that sounds like a brochure fails. It speaks to no one in particular, so it moves no one in particular. I made that case in Does Your Content Sound Like a Brochure?.
Two more principles hold this up. We work to be genuinely convincing, which comes from understanding the product, the prospect and the market well enough that our counsel carries weight. And we treat communication as our primary tool, the one skill we work on above all others. You can have the right answer and still lose the room if you cannot carry it across.
Honest trade: give more than they expect
This is the part that makes the rest safe to wield. We never make a false claim, ever. If a prospect does not genuinely need what we offer, we tell them so. That single rule is what separates selling from manipulation, and it is what lets a buyer trust a word you say.
We also lead with value. We aim to exchange more value than the client expects, every time, and we are never comfortable getting something for nothing. People pay to receive value, so we make sure they receive more of it than they paid for.
Underneath all of it, we like people. We want them to do well. Keeping a real solution from someone who needs it is a small cruelty. It is also why we are happy to walk away when the fit is not there, rather than sing for our supper. More on that in Stop Singing for Your Supper.
The energy underneath all of it
Which brings me back to the plane, and the gap I noticed.
Principles keep you honest, but on their own they do not make a place feel alive. The last two sections of the charter are about that feeling. Relentlessness comes first. We reach far more prospects than we need, so we are never desperate for a single yes. We push through rejection when, and only when, we believe the prospect is genuinely better off for it. We think in solutions, and we take pride in the barriers we get past rather than complaining about the ones in our way.
Then verve, which is really the whole point. Selling is a game that calls for real skill, and we like winning it. Every call is a fresh chance to influence someone. The space should feel electric, in constant motion, loud when someone does something great. That was the thing I felt at Microsoft. The sheer play of it. A team that loves the contest will out-work a team that merely fears the target, every single time.
How to actually use it
A charter on a wall is decoration. A charter in your operation is culture. The difference is whether it touches your decisions.
Here is the honest part. You do not pull a team out of a slump and into that winning energy overnight. The shift is slow, and it is genuinely hard. The charter will not do the work for you. What it gives you is a standard to keep pulling people back to while the culture takes hold.
So we are wiring ours in. We hire against it, because you can teach a process far more easily than you can install a love of the game, so we look for people who already carry the temperament. We manage performance against it, so the behaviours the charter names carry as much weight as the number itself. And we read it often enough that it becomes the language of the floor, the thing people say to each other when a deal gets hard.
If you want a simple place to start, take the one method I personally swear by and run your next ten conversations through it, from The Simplest Sales Framework. Then bring the charter in behind it as the standard you hold the whole team to.
The Blacfox Sales Charter, in full
Here it is, exactly as we use it. Take what is useful.
Our north star. Everything we do leads to one thing: the sale of our clients’ products. No matter how complex things may seem, that is the only star we steer by.
Ownership
I am responsible. Unlike other jobs, I take responsibility not just for my own work, but also for the decisions prospects make. My sphere of responsibility is much larger. I love this about my work. I love that I get to influence the decisions others make about their own prosperity and success.
Target attainment is our pedigree. We’re innately target-driven. A target isn’t an aspirational number. It is a firm commitment we don’t take lightly. When we give our word, we mean it.
Listening
We are sincerely curious. To understand what the prospect or the market truly needs, we ask questions and listen intently. This is the heart of how we craft effective positioning.
We sell on need. Marketing creates demand by speaking to a market’s need. Sales is the process of enlightening a prospect, positioning to their individual need until they agree to purchase. We sell on need, nothing else.
We value objections. Prospects who don’t object aren’t serious. We listen intently to every objection, acknowledge it sincerely, and address it with honesty.
Positioning
Positioning is the whole game. To sell any product well, we must position it to be deeply relevant to the prospect. If the product’s value hits home and rings true, they will buy. Our entire workflow is reverse-engineered from this one goal: to create positioning so compelling, so relevant, that any prospect would be crazy not to move ahead.
We are convincing and influential. We take the time to understand the product, the prospect, and the market. That understanding gives us certainty, makes our counsel meaningful, and changes hearts and minds.
Communication is our primary tool. We communicate as professionals, no matter what is thrown at us. We consistently work to improve our communication above any other skill.
Honest trade
We sell with honesty and integrity. We never make a false claim, ever. If a prospect does not genuinely need what we’re offering, we tell them as much.
We always exchange more value than our clients expect. People pay to receive value. As professionals, we lead with value, and we are never content to get something for nothing.
We love helping people. Because of our deep affinity for others, we want them to thrive and we do our utmost to make it happen. Keeping a solution from someone who needs it is cruel.
Relentlessness
We’re not desperate for a yes. We reach far more prospects than we ever need. In marketing and sales, volume counts, so our outreach is always disproportionately high.
We complete the sales process. Some prospects seem to care less about their own wellbeing than we do, and enlightening them can feel thankless. But we push through until we reach the intended outcome.
We persevere. We press on through rejection only if we believe the prospect is better off for it. When we believe that, we don’t let go.
We think in solutions. Problems always show up when we’re trying to land deals. We think on our feet and find clever solutions, no matter what.
We take pride in overcoming barriers. Instead of relaying the news about a barrier, we brag about how we overcame it.
Verve
We love the thrill of it. Selling isn’t a grind. We’re not suffering our way to our target. Every sale is a challenge that calls for our unique skill. We see this as a game, and we love winning.
We enjoy speaking to prospects. Getting on the phone is never a chore. Every call is a brand new opportunity to inspire and influence.
We bring verve and energy into our space. The sales area is abuzz. It feels electric. It is a place in constant motion. We’re enthused by speaking to prospects and hitting targets. When someone does something great, we celebrate.
We respect the craft. We regard sellers and marketers as the apex of the business jungle. We recognise the talent it takes to get products into the hands of buyers, and we all aspire to reach that level.
One last thing
That is the charter. I built it for Blacfox, but I wrote it down so it could travel. If it saves you the work of starting from a blank page, it has done its job.
Use it as it is. Edit it until it sounds like your own team. Then tell me how you put it to work, and what changed. I would like to know.
Make it rAIn, KG