A well organised, well prepared team will always beat a disorganised, unprepared team with a few stellar players. We’ve all seen it, from amateur teams all the way through to the elite professional levels. The world-beating teams are there because of their painstaking approach to preparation, strategy and execution, and having stellar players doesn’t hurt.

I was recently watching the BBC annual sports love-in called Sports Personality of the Year. It’s not really about personality as such, although you do get the odd winner with personality, like cyclist Bradley Wiggins a few years ago. Last year’s winner was tennis player Andy Murray, who freely admits he’s a touch short-changed on the charisma front and who gets tagged a lot with the d-words: dogged, dour, determined.

Except that Andy Murray beat out the other 11 finalists – who were all world champions and world number ones – to take the crown.  Andy is at the time of writing world number 2 but won no grand slams or the end of year bash last year. He won it principally because Great Britain won the Davis Cup for the first time in about a thousand years. As a side note, thank goodness it’s a Britain thing, because England would be in the bottom tier if the 3 nations competed separately.

The Great Britain team also won the team award as well.

A good team trumps good individuals. It’s the same in business, and especially in sales and marketing. All the more reason for us to stay focused on preparation, strategy and execution.