If there is one movie you want to see with your sales team, it should be Lawrence of Arabia!

If there is one movie one wants to see with their sales team, it should be Lawrence of Arabia!

It’s a story of independent thinking, persistence, & fightback under difficult circumstances.

It’s set in WWI. Lawrence is a Brit solder with a vision of uniting the feuding Arab tribes & driving out the Turks from Damascus. He slowly wins the Arabs by being one of them. When he meets the ragtag tribal forces, he finds them demoralized after taking the Turkish big guns with just horses & swords. To drive out the Turks, King Faisal, tells him, they need a miracle.

At this moment we come to an extraordinary moment in cinema. Lawrence thinks. He’s seen lost in thought, pacing around the desert searching for the answer.

The solution, he finally conjures up is to cross the difficult desert and take the Turkish stronghold of Aqaba from the rear. The Turkish guns are fixed, pointing to the sea. An attack from the desert will surprise them. The Arabs say it is impossible, but our hero cajoles and persuades them one by one.
The sales process not as one of desperation, rejection, and deceit in the pursuit of financial reward, but as one of subtlety, craft, & imagination in pursuit of a BHAG goal!

From Howard Anderson (Harvard) via Philip Broughton’s book ‘The Art of the Sale’.