For those who don’t know, Kellen Moore is a 4th year Jr QB for Boise State. He is 6’0″ 180-ish. Out of his uniform, he looks a little bit like Napoleon Dynamite. In his uniform, he looks like he borrowed it to go trick or treating. Last night under the enormous pressure of expectations, he was a little off – no interceptions but some poor throws and a fumble. Until the final drive – where he threw completion to a 3rd string TE and a 3rd string WR. Then threw the winning TD pass. Already a Heisman candidate (he finished 7th last year), he has continued one of the most remarkable stories in football history.

To say that Kellen was “lightly recruited” is an understatement. Despite throwing a jaw-dropping 173 (Yes – 173!) TDs in high school, the only schools that gave him a sniff were Eastern Washington and Idaho – and eventually BSU. Despite the stats and the pedigree (son of a coach), he doesn’t “look” like a QB.

In analyzing Kellen’s success as QB, he has 3 specific traits:

1. Calm under pressure
2. Leadership
3. Command of the playbook

In other words, all the things Matt Leinart doesn’t have. And all the things that Joe Montana had.

So what does this have to do with Kellen’s future in sales?

I have recruited, trained, and developed over 100 salespeople in the last 15 years. Some when I was a sales manager in my corporate life – and more recently as part of my role as an advisor to my clients. I have made and/or seen the same mistakes with salespeople over the years. We can’t get past The Look: the good-looking, smooth talker with the impressive resume. So we hire them, pay an inflated base … and are disappointed by the results. It’s not that they suck – they just don’t perform with enough consistency where we can trust them. They do good enough to make us keep them, but not enough to believe in them. Meanwhile, our competition hired the nerdy looking dude with no corporate experience on his resume – and he is kicking our butt. If you have any experience managing salespeople, you have seen some variation of this scenario many times.

Why does this happen? Let’s take the 3 traits of a great QB from above and apply to a salesperson:

1. Calm under pressure: like football, this is a combination of a number of scenarios. For sales, it boils down to one thing. Under pressure, they don’t lie. Because of that, they don’t respond to pressure like the smooth-talker does. They just find other ways to tell the truth about why the customer should buy.
2. Leadership: this is a horribly cliched term, but still vital. In sales, it means full accountability for their performance – and often the performance of the rest of the sales team. This means they don’t get out-worked by anyone – and will police the rest of the team to ensure the same from everyone.
3. Command of the playbook: This doesn’t mean they follow the talk-tracks and know every word of the sales brochures. It means they understand the intent of a sales strategy. They get that prospecting isn’t just about the number of people you meet, but about meaningful conversations. They get that you have to be just as good at presenting as you do understanding the terms of a client agreement. They get that details matter but not at the expense of the big picture.

I mentioned trust earlier. Having coached both quarterbacks (although at a youth football level) and salespeople, it boils down to this: can you trust them to perform? If not, you hired the wrong person.

Kellen has one more year at BSU – and some sort of shot at an NFL career. Whenever football is over, there should be a line of people waiting to hire him to sell stuff for them. In the interim, I encourage business owners and sales managers to stop looking for Matt Leinart or Jamarcus Russell and maybe give a shot to the goofy looking guy who has a proven track record of actually moving product.