Preface: Jim Wood and I met at a Gartner Conference. We were listening to Brent Adamson. Brent was provoking audience engagement, so he said, “Turn to the person next to you and ask, ………” Jim and I hadn’t met, we looked at each other, I said, “This is BS!” Jim started laughing in agreement. We spent the audience participation time getting to know each other. (Sorry Brent, we didn’t do what you asked, but we had a great time talking to each other). In one of his last statements, Jim paints an interesting picture, “One of the reasons I’m so interested in selling goes back to my days of producing gallons and gallons of paint. I knew how to make the paint, but had no clue of how the paint moved along its journey to finally being introduced to a paint brush and a wall.” (Jim, you know me well enough to know I couldn’t resist the play on words 😉
Why I’m so interested in selling!
I graduated from college in 1982 with a bachelor degree in Business and a minor in Marketing. I spent the rest of the year working five days a week in a large paint factory and making tens of thousand gallons of white paint. My free time was consumed with knocking on doors and pushing my resume around to anyone that would talk to me. I heard their word “NO” probably 90 percent of the time.
Finally, in early 1983, I found a regional truck rental & leasing company that was hiring. Interview number 1 ended in another no. Interview 2 with the same company resulted in being hired! One of the questions I was asked was around what I wanted to do within the organization. I told the interviewer that I wanted to be an Operator like himself.
Soon I was renting trucks to commercial and residential customers. My boss placed the Yellow Pages book on my desk and told me to get on the phone and call on commercial companies, asking if they own or rent. Sounded simple to me. After months of talking to anybody that might need a truck for their business, my close ratio was on life support.
My sales manager saw something in me that I did not see myself. He promoted me to an outside sales position! I asked again about being an Operator instead, but he insisted that if I want to be an operator, I needed to know how to sell and build relationships to be successful. He talked about getting personal with my clients, really know their business. Ask for the opportunity to go beyond the office and get into what your customers do and how they produce a widget or provide a service.
Now, 40 years have gone by and I never held the position of an operator. My path was one of connecting, listening, helping and solving solutions as well as helping our commercial sales associates to do the same. Nothing really changed over 40 years in my opinion. We taught our sellers to connect, listen, assist and solve problems. And, we adopted enablement strategies to help our sellers and field sales coaches be more productive by staying in front of their customers and prospects while following our sales process.
Selling has never been so challenging, and the Buyers Journey surely is not linear to say the least. One of the reasons I’m so interested in selling goes back to my days of producing gallons and gallons of paint. I knew how to make the paint, but had no clue of how the paint moved along its journey to finally being introduced to a paint brush and a wall.
Thinking back, I should have been selling the paint rather than making it!
Good Selling!
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