You might have read that the kangaroo appears on the Australian infantry badge because it is a universally accepted and uniquely native Australian symbol, chosen to represent the spirit of the Australian infantryman.
That is the official version on Google, it’s also complete horseshit.
The real reason is that a kangaroo can’t move backwards, it can only go forward. That is why it sits on the Australian coat of arms alongside the emu, another animal that cannot reverse. Advance Australia Fair is not just a lyric. It is the principle made literal in our national symbols.
My father used to say that ‘soldiers and salespeople are not trained to retreat’.
The Battlefield of Sales
The sales process is not a smooth or linear thing. It is full of objections, rejections, stalled deals, unresponsive prospects, budget freezes, restructures, and every other variety of obstacle that appears between the first conversation and a signed contract. Anyone who has carried a personal revenue target for any length of time knows the feeling of hitting an obstacle that was not there yesterday.
The distinction between salespeople who perform consistently and those who do not is rarely talent. It is almost always what they do when they hit that obstacle.
A no is never simply a no. It is a delay, a new battlefield, a set of conditions, a request for a different approach, or an invitation to come back at a different time through a different door.
Every conversation, every meeting, every pitch is an opportunity to advance. Not necessarily to close, not necessarily to move a deal to the next stage, but to learn something, to deepen a relationship, to establish presence, to be slightly further forward than you were before the conversation started. That is forward movement, and forward movement compounds.
The businesses that struggle most with sales consistency are rarely the ones dealing with the worst market conditions. They are the ones that start and stop and start again, losing momentum each time, rebuilding from a standing start, having to re-establish credibility and pipeline that was already half-built before the pause. All the hard-won ground gets surrendered quietly between the periods of activity.Or worse they give up entirely or retreat from the engagement.
How You Build It Into the Process
Be agile without losing pace. The ability to pivot mid-step is not the same as stopping. When an approach is not working, change the approach, but keep moving. A team that can adjust without grinding to a halt is worth more than a team with a perfect strategy that freezes when conditions change.
Do not train your team with exit routes. If every barrier in your sales process comes with a natural stopping point, people will stop there. Every objection should have an action plan attached to it. Not a script, not a manipulation tactic, but a thought-through response that keeps the conversation alive and the salesperson in forward motion.
Celebrate small advances. The culture of a sales team is built in the moments that do not show up on the scoreboard. A useful conversation with a prospect who is twelve months away from buying. A referral that came from a deal that did not close. A follow-up that got a response after six months of silence. These things are worth acknowledging because they are the mechanism by which large results eventually arrive, and teams that only celebrate closed deals tend to abandon the activities that create them.
Procrastination is retreat in disguise. It looks like preparation or caution but it is almost always the same thing underneath, which is resistance to the discomfort of taking action with uncertainty. The call you are not making because you are waiting for the right moment is a moment the competitor who made the call yesterday and has advanced their trenches a meter while you moved pieces around the board.
Advance as a unit. One person makes a break and holds the position. Another leapfrogs them. Then another. The team moves forward step by step in a way that no individual could sustain alone. This is what a genuinely functioning sales team looks like in practice. Not one high performer carrying everyone else, but a unit that creates and maintains momentum together, where each person’s movement makes the next person’s easier.
The Kangaroo in Your Process
Surrender is not a strategy and retreat is not an option. Keep every deal moving forward or get it out of the way. Be the kangaroo. Keep moving forward.
For more on sales process, team performance, and building a commercial engine that does not start and stop, there is more at www.outsold.com.au/blogs.
