In last week’s post, we explored what happens when your client list is radically redefined. The previous year, my list of prospective clients was 25; this year, I’m contemplating an increase in my sales goal but with only five accounts to make it happen.
Staring at the five target accounts and trying to visualize success at the end of the year brought on a wave of anxiety. My brief history in selling told me more is better, not less is more. A paltry five accounts wasn’t the only change. These were all new accounts. These were totally different companies than the ones I’d been calling on the previous year, and only one of the companies was a client. The one actual client was inherited from one of my peers who paid little to no attention to the client and had recently been fired–due in part to his ineptitude but primarily for not making his quota.
Proving Yourself to Management
The first thought that came to mind after getting all new accounts was to change jobs. You get all new accounts if you’re the new guy, not an existing Account Executive (AE). There was plenty of outrage in the office from most of the other AEs. A few were threatening to leave and, in fact, two did a couple months later. It was clear that politics and relationships played a significant role in the sales district realignment of accounts.
Since I was starting over, it seemed like a good time to shop around, too. The job market was hot, and it didn’t take long to get a few job offers. It’s funny how we can remember particular moments in our lives. The decisions we make are too often unknowingly also the tipping points toward success or failure. This was one of those moments.
In a strange way, I felt I got what I deserved with my new account list. There are certain areas in life where I’ve never lacked for confidence, but my belief in my professional sales skills at the time was weak at best. Even though my track record in the district was better than most, I didn’t see any positives. Politics and ass kissing were not my games, then or now.
I decided not to argue for changes and instead to stay and play the cards I was dealt. Secretly, I wanted to win even more with this batch of non-standard customers. In fact, I did win that year, and it was a very sweet and fulfilling win, but getting there meant navigating over new and unanticipated barriers and a little bit of self-inflicted mind torture.
Overwhelmed with Activities
In previous years, attempting to sell to 25 or more prospects to hit my numbers presented all kinds of challenges. Figuring out the accounts that best fit into the company’s profile of solutions that could be solved for them was an obvious first step. A second was spending most of my time on those accounts, of course. But I was new to this type of selling, and my knowledge of sales was limited to a couple of years of hard knocks experiences and some books I’d read.
The district manager for our office greeted everyone in the office, including me, with “have you sold anything today?” At first I thought it was kind of funny, but this guy was serious. That was the extent of his management abilities, too. He was the poster child for what stressed-out looked like. I wasn’t about to ask for help, anyway, and blow my cover as a junior AE.
As I spent more years at the company, it was clear that most of the AEs with 20-plus years of experience knew less than me. So, instead of focusing on just a few accounts, I tried calling on all 25 prospects. There was never enough time in the day to do all the tasks. The feeling of falling further and further behind is not good for your mental health. Somehow I’d managed to have some success. It just didn’t feel satisfying at all.
Not Enough Tasks to Do
In the new world of only five accounts to call on, I applied my unwitting sales prowess and blasted my way through phone calls and meetings to my five new accounts. Great news. The result: one real opportunity and a pissed-off client. But the other three prospects were a total bust.
“I’m not interested, we’ll never buy your product,” and other inspiring conversations at the other three prospects were discouraging and hard on the ego.
The one existing client hated my predecessor and didn’t much like our company either. But as I learned with this account and several others like them, an unhappy customer is much easier to sell than breaking into a greenfield account.
The dilemma I didn’t expect to face was running out of work every day. It seemed that I’d exhausted all the possible sales activities at my accounts. With only one opportunity and a pissed-off client, I could fill about half of my week. Trying to figure out what to do with the other half became a very serious issue. In the past, getting through my call list was impossible. Now, it felt like both my manager’s eyes and the gaze of the technical sales staff who supported the AEs were all on me.
Asking the Right Question
The problems came down to my lack of experience and the questions I was asking myself.
“How can I fill my day with selling activities?” This is a terrible question to ask regardless of the business you’re in.
The question I eventually started asking myself was, “What do I want to achieve and how am I going to get there?
This whole thing about learning from failures is a fine analogy for sports, but when you’re job is on the line, it stinks. Fortunately, as I dove into helping the client who hated my company, the relationship slowly improved. We’ve all probably seen a Labrador Retriever tirelessly fetch a ball, always happy to run through briars, swim through swampy water or do whatever else it takes to get the ball returned to its master. Well, that’s what it must have looked like to the client observing me in the first few months of our relationship.
Great Business Advice
One day while walking down a hallway at the client’s office, the Vice President responsible for the project asked me for a brief visit in his office. First he thanked me for my work so far. The conversation that followed was one of the most important and humbling experiences in my selling career.
He told me that I needed to learn the word ‘no.’ He gave me specific examples of work his people told me that I should have declined to do. One such fool’s errand he noted was an extensive market research document on my company’s products. I assembled it per the request of one of his directors but no one at the client even looked at it.
“They’re not thinking about our goals for the project,” he said. “I like you, David, but it’s clear to me that you don’t know our goals either. And it doesn’t appear that you have a strategy to help us.” He told me to think about what he’d said and report back to him in two weeks.
The Bitter Reality of Ignorance
Damn, it was painful to hear that I didn’t know what I was doing. But somehow I pulled it together enough to realize this guy was giving me a second chance. Thinking strategically was something we talked about at the office but apparently something I’d never applied to my sales work. The question that really puzzled me the most was why this guy was helping me. In the next post, we’ll explore more about how limited opportunities improve our chances for sales success.
