Two researchers at the Australian Institute of Sport created a sports developmental framework called “FTEM”. FTEM stands for “Foundations, Talent, Expertise and Mastery”. There are three outcomes associated with FTEM: active lifestyle, sports participation, and sports excellence.
From a very high level, an active lifestyle means that the individuals are practicing movements and motions that could be beneficial to any sport. Sports participation allows for the teaching of specific exercises around a sport. Sports excellence focuses on expertise and mastery of a sport.
It’s an interesting thought experiment when we categorize salespeople into these three categories.
Here we would categorize salespeople that have chosen sales as their profession but have not progressed to the more advanced levels of selling. This can range from new salespeople who are seeing if they like sales…to more veteran salespeople who don’t necessarily “love” it, but for one reason or another ended up in the profession.
These are salespeople who are actively trying to improve or are committed to their craft. Salespeople are refining their skills and learning from others around them. They might be reading some books, articles, or blogs to improve. Perhaps they have taken a sales training program and were able to implement the training, or they are hungry for more training.
These are salespeople who have reached the pinnacle of the profession. Through hard work, hard knocks and determination, these salespeople have achieved a high expertise or mastery of selling. These salespeople are capable of hitting high six and seven figures in commissions. One challenge in achieving selling expertise or mastery is that a lot of rising stars of sales move to management positions.
