My career move into sales was a total surprise. One day I’m doing consulting work, the next day I’m in sales. Closing a sale kinda seemed like playing a ball game; you either won or you lost. Maybe this new gig wouldn’t be so bad after all if it was like winning at sports.
Getting something sold wasn’t what had me freaked out most of the time. My bigger problem was that the new position didn’t come with instructions on what to do to get to the sale or the win. The unwelcome career switch had me completely frazzled.
What Happens Before the Sale?
I was told to visit all of our customers and when finished do it all over again. Oh, and I could only be at the office once a week. These were the marching orders to sales Nirvana from my boss to his newly minted sales guy (me). Despite the vague and general instruction, he did finish my sales training by assuring me that I’d figure it out and that he trusted me to get the job done.
It felt like I’d been set adrift on a leaky life raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Visiting clients wasn’t a big deal. I was already doing a lot of that as a consultant for the company. Our clients paid good money for me to help them, so I wondered why they would want to visit with me now as a salesman. I quietly mulled over this and several other concerns.
No Clue
The first round of client visits took almost half of the year to complete. Clients welcomed my visits. It turned out that they ignored my new title, but they sure liked free consulting. The problem was that clients who had worked with me as a consultant never stopped treating me like one. My boss scolded me each week during my debrief to him on my client visits. He didn’t want me to be a consultant, but he didn’t tell me what else I should be doing either.
I had no clue what to do in my new selling role. Helping clients solve problems with our software was what I did best, and it was meaningful work. In the coming years, I’d discover that helping clients be successful was key to my selling success, too.
The First Sale
“Damn, even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally,” quipped my boss about my first sale. The blind squirrel comparison didn’t bother me… too much. Luck didn’t have anything to do with it. The opportunity got initiated over lunch with the client. They were discussing a problem in one of their business units. After informing them that one of our modules might solve their needs, I spent the next two days proving it to them.
My first sale!
How Much Do I Get Paid?
It’s probably a pretty good idea to know what your commission plan is before you jump into sales or, in my case, get pushed into it. I learned this after my first sale — for me, at the time, the answer was “not much.” Reflecting on how the sale happened, I made it a practice during each client visit to review other applications we offered.
This couldn’t be more obvious now, but it wasn’t when I started my selling journey. My sales education was happening one mistake at a time.
Some More Sales Advice
“If you keep doing consultant work, the client will always view you as a consultant,” came the calm advice from my boss. After hearing this statement about a dozen times over my first year in sales, I finally started to separate myself from problem-solving and executing the work. This allowed me to be more effective with my time and see more clients more often.
After about two years of being on the road, I asked my boss if it’d be okay to come to the office more often. The expression on his face was a picture of total confusion.
“Did I tell you that you could only be in the office one day a week?” he questioned with a look of disbelief on his face. “Yeah, yeah, do whatever you think is right to meet your goal.”. Two years of constant travel was starting to wear me down. I still planned to keep meeting with all of our clients regularly, but I also needed to work on new selling ideas.
Feeling Stuck
It didn’t take many weeks for my travel routine to implode. My calendar was now filled with meetings that I had never attended before and that didn’t have anything to do with sales. The rest of my day seemed to be consumed with other ad hoc meetings and time-wasting activities.
The more days I spent in the office, the more overwhelmed I started to feel. Getting on the road, and in front of clients and prospects, rebalanced things and made everything right in my world.
Nothing got sold at the office. Maybe this was what my boss was trying to tell me by limiting time in the office. Maybe there was something to my boss’s simple approach to selling.
Getting Unstuck
Many years and a couple of sales jobs later, I find myself fighting the same battle. The bridge to the bright side is right in front of me, but the shackles on my feet squeeze tighter each day of inaction.
Fixing a physical limitation like shackles would be simple. Hitting the escape hatch from an illogical void consuming my mind isn’t so easy. That’s how I feel when I spend too many days at my home office. Maybe the thought that nothing gets sold from the office is lurking in the back of my mind.
Breaking the figurative chains that bind me was the same, every time. Get to a client site. Find a way to have a conversation with a prospect. The prospect part isn’t easy. But the chaos in my mind while working in the office finds a natural order when I’m on the road. The dots start to connect, and they ultimately will result in a sale, one conversation at a time.
Cliché or Reality
‘Being there is half the battle’ or ‘People buy from people they like’
“Visit all of our customers and when you’re done, do it all over again and don’t come to the office but one day a week.” It turns out this simple two-part sales education from my first boss was sales genius after all.
