Sales Laundry

My first official outside job as an account manager began with an immediate wake up call.  I was walked to my new cubicle and directed to have a seat. 

 “Here is your phone.”

My new boss looked at me, smiled, nodded his head and pointed to a standard beige 12 button hotel phone.

 “There are your leads.”

He said, pointing to a phone book.

 “Keep track of everything and write your proposals on that.  They should have it working later today.”

 He said, pointing to a PC on my desk.

 With that he was gone and my sales career as an account manager was launched.

 I had exactly no idea who I should call or for that matter what I should say if someone answered the phone, except that I was selling computer networking equipment and services.

 At that point I made the single smartest decision a young account manager can make. 

 I flipped the phone book open to a random page, found the first listing and started dialing.

 At that point, not realizing it, I made my first mistake as a young account manager as well.

 My random page selection had me cold calling bail bond companies to make my technology fortune.

 Several calls and an appointment or two later, I learned my first lesson, that bail bond companies were not part of our target market.

 The point is do not let the fear of failure or the fear of not having 100% of the details stop you from swinging for the fences.

 You ARE going to fail sometimes.  You ARE going to get asked a question you do not have an answer to.  If you are in this business any time at all, trust me on this, it is going to happen.

 Don’t fear failure, accept it.   Accept it not because I said it or because it is an old sales adage, accept it because it is as much a part of the business as the shoes on your feet.

 New guys call their mistakes failure and get all upset. 

 I call my mistakes experience.  I learn from them and leave the new guys asking “How did he know to do that?” the next time the scenario presents itself, as it almost always does, again.