One More Call
I had a call with one of my mentors today. I called him because I was frustrated. The deals I had been working for the last few months seem to be going south on me and I was starting to get down on myself.
I talk to Bruce because he’s been a career long sales professional and he is my coach when it comes to job related topics.
You have ups and downs. In most of my roles I don’t have anyone impartial I can talk to. I know what I’m doing most of the time, but sometimes I get down or I lose my way. That’s the way it is in the startup world. That’s the way it is in sales.
The difference in startup world is that these deals can actually be life or death turning points for the company. I feel personally responsible. People are counting on me and I’m letting them down.
That’s the startup world. It’s either all positive or all negative and it swings between to the two poles depending on the business. It’s all Jerry Maguire moments where you’re either dancing or crying in your beer.
It’s not a numbers game like in big companies. It’s a face to face fist fight, or depending on your point of view, maybe a slow dance. Every move, every call counts.
There are three main things that make a successful business interaction for a sales professional.
The first is detachment. As the immortal Herb Cohen said, “you have to care, just not that much”. You have to be emotionally connected enough to give 100% and to bring the passion, but you have to do the emotional jujitsu of not being emotionally connected to the result.
Which sounds great but is almost impossible to pull off. Attach to the process, detach from the result. Otherwise you’ll get desperate when things aren’t going well. You’ll lose your ability to walk away. You’ll take it personally.
When you become attached to the business it will show up in how you act, you’ll give tells. The prospect will smell it. They will smell your fear. 2 million years of evolution means that they won’t even know why they don’t want to trust you or do business with you. They just won’t because they smell your fear and desperation. Like a dog can smell when a human is afraid.
Detachment is how you put aside the fear of losing. If you allow the fear of losing it will overpower the skill of winning. You’ll start playing to not lose. That’s the kiss of death in a startup. You can get away with that in a big company where not losing is positive. In a startup you have to play to win.
You need to stay detached as you play to win.
Detachment is the rule. You need to always maintain the ability to walk away. That’s your ultimate leverage. Not only will it help you win business and maintain margins it will keep you sane.
The second is an attitude of abundance. In business you cannot be a negative person. No one likes a negative person. The baseline of abundance is a positive approach. More than that, you have to operate as if the world is abundant. You have to operate as if you have so much opportunity that you can walk away. Abundance supports your detachment but in a positive way.
This is the attitude that you carry with you into your interactions. This translates to you truly believing that you are shepherding the prospect to a better world where 1+1 always equals 3. You have to believe and practice abundance in such a way that it becomes infectious.
Your abundant attitude will create positive momentum towards a better future. That belief in the abundance of opportunity and time is very important in a startup. Reality is smacking you in the face every day. You typically don’t have the resources, the infrastructure or the history of success that a large company can draw on. You are creating a reality. That reality has to be abundant and you need to carry it with you.
Abundance, like detachment, is easy to talk about, but hard to practice. As you struggle to find the next lead or get people to return your calls. As you are ignored and told ‘no’ to for the 100th time. This is how deep your well of abundance needs to be.
In a startup you need to be almost Pollyanna. Your attitude of abundance must be irrational, until it isn’t.
The third is intent. You need have the correct intent going into every action and interaction. Your intent cannot be to close the deal and make money. Your intent cannot be to get something. Your intent has to be to solve a problem and help someone. If you carry an avaricious intent into your meetings and calls you will smell like a greedy, self-centered asshole.
Like fear, people are wired to smell greed. You can’t look at your business prospects and see tuitions and car payments. That’s like the old cartoons where the starving person sees everything and everyone as food. That’s why as a rule we don’t like interacting with sales people. We know they are after something. They see us as food.
You have to flip that script by bringing an honest intent to your clients. Ask yourself ‘How is this going to help them?” Because if it isn’t you have no business approaching them (pun intended).
As a startup you tend to pretend you are farther along than you are. I would counter that this is part of a dishonest intent. You don’t have the infrastructure, history and clients. It’s a fact. Use it to your advantage. Use that as part of an honest approach. It will help you qualify your market and your opportunities.
If you start with this base of good intent everything gets more honest and enjoyable in your interactions. It takes energy to pretend to be someone you’re not. Don’t do it. Leverage what you have and bring that honest intent.
Share that intent right up front in your interactions. Here is how I think I can help you. I’m not sure if I can. Maybe I can’t. Maybe we’re too small for you to do business with. But I’m committed to working with you to figure it out. If it turns out differently we’ll shake hands and be n our way to the next opportunity.
That’s the recipe for effective business interactions. Bring a valid and honest intent. Bring an attitude of abundance. And always be detached from the outcome.
I’m not saying this is easy. It is not. It is a high wire act muddied by the inclusion of humans with all their emotional baggage. Just because you are bringing good intent, abundance and detachment to the table doesn’t mean the business people you are engaging with are doing the same.
Just the opposite. For many people these types of business transactions are foreign to them. It’s not what they do every day. Your potential partner may bring fear, scarcity and deceit to the engagement. This sentiment is summarized in the old sales saying, “Buyers are liars”.
To give them the benefit of the doubt, they probably don’t intend to be liars. They just aren’t good at this type of business transaction. They may not even know they are lying. This is why we, as professionals not only need to manage our emotional approach, but also that of the client.
We need to lead.
People don’t want servants. They want leaders. They want someone to tell them what they are doing wrong and lead them to something better. Prospects want strong leaders. They won’t say it, they may not even know it, but they want to be led.
Now you are seeing why selling is not as easy as you think. Not only do you have to practice and manage your own approach, but you need to manage the client’s approach.
On top of that, you need to deliver results. There’s no hiding. It’s not about activity. You can do all the right things and still end up failing. It’s a role where you are going to fail 9 times out of ten. That’s why those top three things are so important.
…
Enough of the theory. I could write a book and maybe I will but that book has been written by a thousand other people already. Let’s return to the point.
I called my friend and mentor Bruce just to talk through it with someone I could trust.
One more side alley. You should have these people in your life that you can talk to and trust. Everyone needs to talk it out now and then.
Bruce was an old-time sales guy. He used to ride around and knock on doors in his day. He told me one of his first sales managers gave him some simple advice.
“Make one more call.”
At the end of the day. When it’s quitting time and you’re tired. Make one more call.
He tells the story of when he used to sell law books. He was driving home one night from a long and unsuccessful day of selling and he saw a light on in a building. And even though he was exhausted and felt like quitting he went up to that office and knocked on the door.
The guy said “What the hell are you doing here?”
To which Bruce replied, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Bruce ended up getting a new client . By making that one more call.
That’s the message for you here. You are going to have days that knock you down and kick the shit out of you. It will seem like everything is going wrong. You will feel defeated.
It is at this point that you need to wipe the creases out of your suit coat, smile and pick up the phone.
Make one more call.
Think about what you are saying to yourself when you do that. You are making a positive action. You are doing something. You are making a difference. You are doing something that is under your control.
That one more call can be the most empowering call of the day.