You Have Died of Dysentery - What the Oregon Trail Taught Me About Sales

The long road from Missouri to Oregon was a hard one filled with snakebites, cholera, typhoid fever and of course, dysentery. Moreover, if you were born between the late 1970s to early 1980s, you remember hearing these sweet words from your teacher, "Class, put your books away, it is time to play The Oregon Trail."

Who would have known that when Mrs. Green spoke those words, she was preparing me for a life as a sales professional. You see, there were more lessons to learn from that game besides that we should not shoot too many buffalo since you cannot carry it all back to your wagon.

Planning before you start on the trail is key

For those of you who remember the start of the game, you had to go about picking your profession, buying supplies from the trader, and deciding on what time of the year was best to leave. Like any 9-year-old boy, I just wanted to go out and make the buffalos extinct by shooting them all.

My lack of planning would always end up bitting me in the butt and leave me dead somewhere along the trail. My 9-year-old mind never realized how much of a metaphor this would be for my sales life.

As a sales professional, you should always plan before you start a call, demo or any part of your sales process. Much like being on the trail, not planning before these parts will leave you floating down the river without a paddle.

How many opportunities have you been involved in where you would have been more successful if you just sat down and planned out the steps? Sure, writing out a plan of attack for a call or demo is not the most exciting thing to do, but neither was stocking up on wagon wheels in the game, but you sure did need one when you broke down.

Many problems can be avoided if you just take care of your ride.

In the game, if you did not keep up with your wagon and your oxen, you would die. It is that plain and simple. The same holds true in sales. Your ride is your sales process and maintaining it is as simple as sticking to it.

Being in management, I have seen thousands of deals go sideways because a rep did not stick to their process. A proper sales process can help you keep calm in the eye of the storm; like when a prospect will not introduce you to their management, they ask you for pricing early on, or they shoot you down on a cold call.

Deals will go sideways, and prospects will always throw you for a loop, but by sticking to your process, you will make sure you avoid any traps.

During every deal, you should always be asking yourself, am I following the process that I defined?

Time to be a big game hunter.

Everybody knows the best part of Oregon Trail was the hunting. Something was mesmerizing when you lined your cursors up on a squirrel and blasted it away. However, if you wanted the most bang for your buck (literally), you would aim at the massive, slow-moving buffalo. They were easy to target and provided the most meat.

In sales, you have to ask yourself are you a big game hunter or are you going after the squirrels? The secret to this is you need to go after both.

Everyone has heard of the 80/20 rule, and you should apply it to the size of deals you are going after as well. You need to have those small deals, squirrels, to help you get through the winter till you can take down the larger deals, the buffalos. By going after just one or the other, you are going to leave yourself in a rough spot when the end of the quarter comes around, and you are short of your number.

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Questions:

Am I the only one who played this game?

What are some life lessons you learned from playing it?

Do you try and follow these lessons in your daily sales life?