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Many years ago, my boss’s boss stopped me in the hallway. “Congratulations,” he said. I heard you had an application signed with Cargil.
I was concerned. Since he knew the application had been signed, he would expect the transaction to close.
“Well, it’s not closed yet. Maybe wait until the money is in the bank to congratulate me.”
“Of course that’s true,” he said. “But you don’t get to closings if you don’t get applications signed. Naturally it’s no guarantee, but that’s precisely the reason you have to congratulate yourself for achieving an important step. If you only take the time to celebrate and reflect on success at the very end, you learn less, and you have less fun.”
Any process that has a lot of noise built into it relies more on luck than we care to admit. Look through the noise to the process underneath. You have to behave as if A leads to B leads to C, even if you know it not always sequential. Otherwise you’ll never do A. And A is the “blocking and tackling” of good sales. It means doing the research, making the calls when you are ready to do so, and preparing for meetings when you get a yes to your meeting request.
Sales is many things. But if it’s not a process, you’re not doing it right.
