For some of our colleagues, sales is a temporary place holder. A stepping stone, a hash mark on the timeline of their career. That’s ok. This job isn’t for everyone. If personal growth rushes you past the title of “salesman” and onto something else, I will congratulate and wish you well.
But for the rest of us, this is what we do. I am proud to be a salesman. I have accomplished many personal goals because of this occupation. For those of us who consider this our life’s career, we take it personal, we take it seriously.
I don’t know any successful career sales professionals that don’t have some quirks. Ego. A strong desire to win. A complete and utter disdain for losing. And a sense of urgency.
A sense of urgency is the corner stone of any sales project. Without urgency, it is near impossible to inspire your colleagues and counterparts to join in and help you start, develop, and successfully close a sales project.
What responsible engineer is going to dedicate expensive engineering hours on your project or idea, if you cannot impress upon them an infectious sense of urgency? Certainly, they want facts and details. Absolutely they need a business case as to why they should help you “chase” your project. But none of that starts until the sales person shows up with an idea, some angst, and a “let’s get this done right now” attitude.
I find myself looking sideways at salespeople who continuously use phrases like, “Yeah, I’ll get to that next week”. Next week? Why not yesterday? Last night? How about right this moment?
A very successful sales executive once said to me:
“Each week is 1/52nd of the year. If you are satisfied with your effort this week, fine. If you are ok pushing something off, fine. But if not…. you are running out of time.”
It is easy to make yourself busy. You can fill your daily calendar with reactive and housekeeping issues, work all day, and never accomplish one actual proactive sales task. Call reports and expenses need to be done, right? Better make time to check in with a few work buddies and commiserate about the new growth budget. The dry cleaning needs to be picked up, and you had better get a haircut for the big meeting “next week”. Sounds like a full day, and not one bit of it generates a new sale.
These same sales-folks are content with “making budget”. They are complacently satisfied with mediocrity, of just getting by. There is always a reason for failure, and oddly enough, it is never their fault. I knew an old salesman, years ago (the ancient 80’s) who had the same handful of excuses, #1 being, “the street is dead”…meaning there were no projects. NONSENSE.
The street is never “dead”. There is always a new customer, a new market, a new product. Look at your area of responsibility; do you have ALL the business? No, you do not. Go shake up your competition. Stir the pot. With a sense of urgency, because the clock is ticking.
At Strategic Automation Services, we think about the urgent nature of our sales effort every day. We stumble, we backtrack, we circle around, we chase opportunities when math and logic suggest failure. But we do it because our principles and manufacturers expect it of us. I have worked for many sales managers in my career. As independent sales representatives, we continue to report to someone tasked with monitoring and grading our performance.
Reflecting on 35 years, considering all the criticism we have absorbed and accepted, all of the coaching and correcting we have been given, never once did someone suggest that we should slow down and expect less.
A sense of urgency will wake you up at 3:00 a.m. It will make you HATE a snow day. It will put you in front of a customer at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon. It will sometimes anger engineers and it will please sales managers.
And it will create new customers, new projects, and new sales. Be anxious. Be urgent.
