Why do I push myself to get the sale? Well…
Imagine mid-August the sun is shining bright, it’s the very first day of school for students in my territory. I had gotten up early and prepared extra well for all the cold-calling I’d be doing that day. Feeling very optimistic and excited to get my day started. I planned to visit every school in one of the districts. I could hardly wait. After all, I had been visiting these schools off and on for a couple of weeks trying to catch a human doing any kind of work.
I had inherited this territory after a rep left abruptly just three weeks earlier. It was in Southern Indiana, just across the river from Louisville where I had worked a handful of city zip codes for a full three months before finally selling quota. When my manager asked, “Do you want this territory?” I jumped at the chance. I’d have schools, churches, and businesses galore and no more checking zip code lines and streets. If it was across the state line, it was mine. I always felt when I was given a territory to cover, it belonged to me, mine to care for and protect. I had a mission.
My mission was to make sure everyone across the state line who had a copier knew me, knew I sold Toshiba copiers. I wanted them to know that when they needed one, I would be there to take care of them. If one of those people needed a machine and didn’t buy mine, I was the only one to blame.
So, on this pretty mid-August morning, I set out. The closer I got, the faster my heart began to beat, and the more my thoughts turned to fear. I reached the first parking lot and pulled in and parked. It seemed all my excitement had vanished. I had left home feeling excited and light, almost bouncy. I now felt heavy hardly wanting to move.
Staring at my blank notebook, I said to myself, “This is a bad idea.” I knew the principal’s name; someone had given in to me when I had stopped in before. I knew it was a man. I started to talk to myself again. “He’s going to be so busy. As soon as you go in the secretary is going to look at you like you’re crazy and tell you they don’t have time for salespeople on the first day of school.” I began to regroup and thought, “Maybe I’ll come back after lunch. Or maybe tomorrow…Is the second day of school really any better than the first? I’ll just drive by today, make a list of where I’ll go tomorrow.”
Somewhere in all of that fear, I decided I’m here. I’m going in. If they yell, I’ll just take it. I opened the car door and pushed myself out of the comfortable seat. When I walked in I could smell school. The same smell I remembered from my own first days long ago. The smell of pencil shavings, and breakfast coming from the cafeteria. When I went in a very nice lady asked if she could help me. I asked for the principal by name, and she said, “Let me see if he’s busy.” In a couple of minutes, he came out of his office and over to the counter. He said “I’m busy right now, but if you can have a seat and wait about fifteen minutes I need to see you. I don’t have a machine that is working in this building this morning.”
Of course, I waited those fifteen minutes. The best part is he didn’t yell at me. No one there thought I was crazy for showing up on the first day of school. After I gathered the information I needed to quote his school, he sent me to see another principal, a friend of his in the district. I was able to go to the next call with a name and a feeling the call would be more warm than cold.
Eventually, that principal purchased the first machine I ever sold that was over $10,000, and so did the principal he sent me to see. They didn’t buy in August and not in September, but in December they both purchased, making for a very nice end of the year.
In conclusion, I did not get those first big sales because I was savvy or knowledgeable. I didn’t say all the right things. Nor, did I mislead anyone. I didn’t make empty promises about the equipment I offered. What I did was, made those sales because on that August morning I pushed myself to get out of the comfortable car. I pushed myself to get uncomfortable for just a few minutes. I introduced myself, my company, and my product. It wasn’t uncomfortable after those first few minutes. It became comfortable as I built a relationship that turned into solving their problem a few months later.
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