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Adventures in the New Art of Sales and Sales Management

Updated: 17 min 16 sec ago

The High Price of Joyless Sales Manager

45 min 48 sec ago

Salespeople are optimistic by nature. They have to be; if they weren’t optimistic they could never succeed at a job where the first communication they have with their dream client is most often a flat out rejection and where they lose more of the opportunities they pursue than they win. This is true even when they are succeeding wildly!

A joyless sales manager can ruin their sales team and destroy their capacity to win by demolishing their natural optimism.

The Devil’s Advocate

Every opportunity comes with enough risks, threats, challenges, and competitors that the devil needs no advocate. The sales manager’s role is to not to play devil’s advocate when discussing opportunities. When coaching the salesperson on the opportunity it is fair to challenge their strategy and to push the salesperson for their best thinking and their best performance—as long as it is done with the intention of helping them identify and obtain the ideas and the resources that they need to win the deal. It can’t be to simply play devil’s advocate—that role, without fully participating in strengthening the deal yourself—is too negative.

Sales managers who play devil’s advocate without participating in generating ideas that strengthen the deal strategy, without helping to obtain the resources that may build a competitive advantage, and without a good and positive sprit, end up tearing their salesperson down and destroying morale.

I’ll Believe It When I See It

A salesperson has to believe that they can win every deal. This belief sustains them through all of the challenges, through all of the periods when the deal is at risk, and through the trials and tribulations that are part of competing for their dream clients.

They have to read positive buying signals as positive. Doing so allows them to believe they can win the deal and to act accordingly, pulling out all of the stops to win the opportunity. When they believe they can win, they are naturally excited to share the good news with their peers and with their sales manager.

A sales manager who doesn’t share their enthusiasm can take the wind from their sales. The sales manager does nothing to encourage the aggressive, no hold barred behaviors that the salesperson needs to take in order to win by suggesting (or saying) that they will believe the deal only when they see it. A sales manager needs to share the belief that they can win. Period! Even when the deal is incredibly unlikely.

The sales manager may never see the deal. The deal may be lost. But destroying the salesperson’s belief—and with it their optimism and confidence—does nothing to advance the deal or increase the salesperson’s likelihood of winning the deal.

The Deal Is Not Good Enough

Most deals aren’t perfect. In fact, many are far less than perfect. But winning the deal is winning the deal. Maybe the price was lower than desired. Maybe the deal requires more work than is normal or anticipated. Maybe it is somewhat short of what you, as a sales manager, would have hoped it would be. And, perhaps the salesperson made a blunder that made one or all of these things true.

If you are a sales manager, before you point out all of the things that are wrong with the deal, how you could have done better, or what you expected, stop and think about the outcome you are trying to achieve. Is it your intention to build your salesperson up by building their desire and capacity to go and win future contests? Or, do you allow your dissatisfaction to rob the event and the salesperson of the joy of winning?

Winning by a field goal in an ugly triple overtime game is still winning. Would you have liked to win in a blowout? Sure. But winning is winning, and winners celebrate and are celebrated before they review the game films to decide how to prevent a close game in the future.

Conclusion

A joyless, pessimistic, or even realist sales manager does nothing to encourage the optimistic fighting spirit a sales force needs to win. They need to share the optimism and share the belief that the deal can and will be won.

Questions

A sense of optimism provides the salesperson with the ability act and to compete against all odds. What does a pessimistic attitude provide the salesperson or your sales team? What does the realist, pragmatist provide your sales team in the way of hope and fighting spirit?

When you challenge your salesperson’s deal strategy by playing devil’s advocate, what do you do to provide the ideas and the resources the strengthen the deal? How do you share in the ownership of the deal by playing devil’s advocate? How do you strengthen your salesperson’s resolve and their commitment to compete and to fight for the deal?

Your salespeople believe that they will win deals that they will lose. What does it cost you to support them in their belief? This is not to suggest that you should allow them to believe they can win without ensuring they have done what is necessary to win. You don’t have to forecast long shot wins, either. But how do you help encourage them to try and to compete against long odds?

Are you guilty of criticizing the particulars of a new win when it is reported? How does this build your salesperson’s capacity and desire to win more deals? What is better way to deal with deals that are short of what you need them to be? How could you celebrate the deal and postpone reviewing all of the mistakes until they can be done in a format that doesn’t destroy the joy of winning—and with it the fighting spirit?

For more on increasing your sales effectiveness, subscribe to the RSS Feed for The Sales Blog and my Email Newsletter. Follow me on Twitter, connect to me on LinkedIn, or friend me on Facebook. If I can help you or your sales organization, check out my coaching and consulting firm, B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, email me, or call me at (614) 212-4279.

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

Get The Sales Blog iPhone App to read The Sales Blog and Twitter Feed on your iPhone.

The High Price of Joyless Sales Manager is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

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Your People Are Your Only Asset (A Note to the Sales Manager)

Mon, 2010-09-06 01:21

You’ve heard it said a million times: “Our people are our greatest asset.” You may be guilty of saying it yourself a time or two. It sounds really good, too. But walking that talk isn’t easy and it is a path that is rarely taken by management, regardless of their intentions.

I am not throwing stones—far from it. It comes down to what you care about.

People Are All You Have Got

The sales managers job is to get results through others. To succeed, you have to be able to generate results through and with the members of your team.

People are all you have to achieve these results. Caring about them and their success is the whole game.

Maybe you bought and implemented the killer sales process. Using this process helps differentiate you and your offering, and when used properly your sales process creates a tremendous amount of value for your dream client and a competitive advantage for you. Congratulations!

Now who is going to operate that sales process? How good do they have to be to ensure that your investment of time, money, and energy generates the results that you need it to?

Maybe you have invested in the most sophisticated sales force automation on the market. Your SFA is integrated with your lead generation tools and social media, it generates the reports that give you a deep dive into metrics that make a difference for you and your company, and it has your sales process completely built in to the workflow. It’s awesome, no doubt!

Who is going to use the sales force automation? How good do they have to be to take advantage of all that your sales force automation has to offer in helping with their performance?

Maybe you have the killer offering. You have innovated and you have leapfrogged your competition with a product or service that changes the game now and in the future.

Who is going to present your offering to your dream clients? Who is going to help them understand how your offering helps your dream clients produce the results that help them to leapfrog their competition?

When it is all said and done, your people are all you ever really have.

Who is it that really creates value for your dream clients? Who is it that differentiates you and your offering? Who is it that works to understand your dream client’s needs and builds the vision of a future together with your company? Who manages the outcome that you promise and that you sell?

If People Are All You Have Got, It Takes More Than Talk

If your people are all you ever really have, then you have to do more than talk. You have to treat people not like they are your greatest asset—you have treat them like they are your only asset.

If people are all you have to produce results, what do you have to do to ensure that your people don’t fail? Seriously, what can you do to ensure that they succeed?

Do you think that this is too much? What else is there?

Whether your people are your greatest asset and your greatest source of competitive advantage or not depends completely and entirely on whether or not you walk your walk when it comes to treating them accordingly. Their success depends on you taking the actions that ensure that they succeed, and taking those actions requires that you care as deeply that they succeed as you need them to care about ensuring that your dream client’s succeed.

Conclusion

If people are your greatest asset and your competitive advantage, then you have to care as deeply about their success as you need them to care about your dream client’s success.

Questions

If people are your only asset, then what do you have to do to ensure that they don’t fail?

If people are your only real asset, if they are your only real competitive advantage, then what do you personally need to do ensure that they produce the results that you need?

If your success—or your survival—depended on your people succeeding, what will you personally do to ensure that they succeeded in achieving the objectives that you gave them?

Do you treat your people like they are your greatest asset? Do you treat your people like they are your greatest asset when they make mistakes? Do you treat your people like they are your greatest asset when they make mistakes that cost you money or cause you to miss your goals and objectives?

Look at your calendar. How much of it is filled with appointments that directly relate to helping your people succeed?

Do you care as deeply about your people’s success as your expectation about how much they need to care about ensuring your dream client’s succeed with your solution?

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

Get The Sales Blog iPhone App to read The Sales Blog and Twitter Feed on your iPhone.

Your People Are Your Only Asset (A Note to the Sales Manager) is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

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Adding Meaning

Sun, 2010-09-05 03:30

In complex business-to-business sales, there are times when there is little activity on an opportunity and little communication. This is true even in the best of circumstances, but the silence and inactivity in a competitive situation can be excruciatingly painful. Especially when the opportunity is with one of your dream clients.

There are unreturned calls. There are unanswered emails. There are cancelled appointments.

It is easy to assume the worst. It is easy to assume that the silence—the unreturned phone calls and emails—indicates that your dream client isn’t interested. It is easy to believe that during these periods of inactivity that something has gone wrong, that you have lost the deal, your dream client has lost interest, or they have lost budget approval. While any of these things may be true, it is wrong to add meaning to these events (or non-events).

I have known salespeople to call their dream client and leave a message saying that they understand the silence to mean that the dream client is no longer interested and that they are going to move on to another opportunity. I have also known salespeople to call purchasing agents, taking an adversarial approach and questioning the purchasing agent’s professionalism. In every case, the salesperson attached meaning to the silence that was inaccurate and damaged or destroyed their opportunity.

In one case, after a great first sales call, the salesperson spent more than four months continuing to call the dream client with no return calls. She wanted to throw in the towel, and she suggested that her dream client clearly wasn’t interested, and that there was no reason to spend any more time pursuing her. I insisted that she continue to call—not adding any meaning to the silence and lack of returned calls. She eventually scheduled an appointment after discovering her dream client had a serious medical operation that took her from her work.

It is dangerous to believe that something means something that it doesn’t. This is true early in the sales process when you are doing your discovery and diagnosis work, and it is true later in the sales process—when there are periods of less activity than you would like and when there is too much silence.

Instead of adding your own meaning—and assuming the worst—it is better to ask the questions that uncover the meaning of the silence and the inactivity. There may be legitimate issues that are preventing your dream client from moving forward. The demands of their own job may prevent them from devoting the time and the attention to your opportunity or to the improvements that you can help them to make. Your dream client may need to renegotiate the commitments that they have made, and it will surely take more time than you would like.

But even when there is nothing but silence, it is wrong and it is dangerous to add your own meaning to the silence. It is better to stay the course, to continue to call, to email, to make your meetings, and to pursue your opportunity. If you have to attach meaning to the silence and inaction, then it is better to assume that your dream client has demands that are preventing them from moving forward and that you should be pursuing your opportunity, making your follow up calls, attempting to make your appointments, and reaching your contacts deep in the organization to try to understand the deal status and how you can help to move it forward.

When there is too little activity or periods of silence, don’t attach meaning that discourages you or that prevents you from pursuing your opportunity.

Questions

Does silence or inactivity necessarily mean something negative has occurred and that your deal is in jeopardy?

What are the legitimate reasons that your deals may stall, even when both you and your dream clients would both like to pursue a better future together?

What are the dangers of assuming something negative? How does it impact the actions that you take in pursuing your dream client and your opportunity?

What are more healthy meanings that you might attach to your dream client’s silence or inactivity? What are the best actions that you can take when your dream client goes silent?

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

Get The Sales Blog iPhone App to read The Sales Blog and Twitter Feed on your iPhone.

Adding Meaning is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

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Don’t Confuse Goals and Disciplines

Sat, 2010-09-04 04:59

There is a difference between goals and disciplines. As obvious as that statement may sound, many people—salespeople included—mistake these two ideas.

The reason some people don’t weigh what they want to weigh is because they have a goal of weighing a certain amount. But weighing a certain amount isn’t a goal; it is a discipline. To weigh whatever your target weight is on a daily basis requires that you eat a certain number of calories of certain foods, forego other foods, and exercise in an amount that causes you to remain at a constant weight.

Your weight is the result of the daily disciplines that you keep, for good or for ill. If your daily discipline is two scoops of ice cream before bed, then you will weigh exactly what your discipline dictates.

The same is true of your sales results.

Some salespeople believe they have a goal of making four sales calls per week. Making four new sales call per week, much like maintaining a certain weight, is made up of certain activities, including spending time prospecting each and every day, making cold calls, asking for referrals, attending networking events, and nurturing the relationship that you need in order to schedule these appointments.

Making four sales calls per week is a discipline. It is a constant, much like your weight. If your daily discipline is surfing the web, hanging at the water cooler, and avoiding your prospecting work, your sales results will be exactly what your daily disciplines dictate.

Disciplines are the things that you do every day, every month, every year, over and over again and without failure.

Goals Are Singular Events

Goals are single events. They are one-time occurrences. You may have a goal of billing $2,000,000 in 2010. At the end of the year, you will or will not have reached that goal. You may have goal of winning your $1,000,000 dream client, of increasing your wallet share by 25% across your top five key accounts, of opening a new market, or of launching a new product in the fourth quarter. These are all events. They are goals that can be measured and reached.

Disciplines Are More Powerful Than Goals

Disciplines are way more powerful than goals. Reaching your goals is the result of having maintained all of the daily disciplines that make up and lead to your goal. The reason so many goals are never achieved is not because the goal is unreachable, but because of a failure to maintain the daily disciplines that would have resulted in the goal being achieved.

A goal cannot easily be executed. But all of the activities that make up the goal can be.

Instead of making a goal to read one book per week, adopt the daily discipline of reading one hour a day and put it on your calendar. Executing this discipline leads to the achieving of the goal.

Instead of making a goal of making four new sales calls per week, adopt the daily discipline of making 2 hours of prospecting calls per day, attending one networking event per week, of asking every client for a single referral, and of executing the activities that you built into your nurture toolkit with devotion that borders on the religious.

Questions

What are your goals as a salesperson? Are they single, measurable events, or are they really disciplines that you wish to keep?

What are the daily disciplines that you are required to keep to reach your sales goals?

What goals do you believe that you have that are really disciplines that you wish to keep?

Make a list of your daily disciplines. Then, write down what will occur at some point in the future by keeping those daily disciplines. That is your goal. Then focus on keeping the your commitments to yourself and keeping your daily disciplines.

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

Get The Sales Blog iPhone App to read The Sales Blog and Twitter Feed on your iPhone.

Don’t Confuse Goals and Disciplines is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

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Can You Sell Better Than the Saleswomen of the Tibetan Mountain Passes?

Thu, 2010-09-02 12:03

As you travel through Tibet, you will encounter thousands of people selling things, including Buddhist prayer bowls, prayer wheels, and prayer beads, carpets, art work and, of course, jewelry. I fully expected to see this in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

What I did not expect was to encounter some of the greatest salespeople I have ever witnessed selling on the mountain passes between Lhasa, Tibet and Mt. Everest.

At the top of the mountain passes (some as high as 16,800 ft. in altitude), there are stunning and breathtaking views that demand you leave your car to stand in awe of nature’s beauty and to take pictures. The views are some of the most beautiful you will ever see, and they are emotionally very powerful.

What better place and what better conditions to set up shop to sell souvenirs and trinkets?

Do I Have Your Attention?

As you pull over to the side of the road and begin to take pictures, the saleswomen of the Tibetan mountain passes set upon you immediately. They know that the first thing they need from you is your attention, and being a tourist, they know how to get it. They start by shouting: “Hello!”

Having encountered your kind before and knowing your motivation, they follow up with: “Just looking.” Apparently everyone who has ever walked in front of them has said, “just looking,” and they are now repeating it.

Finally, they attack you with “Cheap, cheap,” and “very good,” and “yak bone,” even when none of these things are true. They follow their scripts, and they have your attention.

The Puppy Dog Close and the Negotiation

If they don’t have your attention, they will press on with harder tactics, like stepping in front of you and putting jewelry in your hands. And Heaven help you if you dare to pick up or accept the piece of jewelry or whatever is handed to you. The saleswomen of the Tibetan mountain passes will not easily accept the jewelry back—they know that if you were looking at it, you almost certainly like it, and they are going to sell it to you.

Once it is in your hands, it is almost certainly yours.

This sounds like a hard tactic, but it isn’t. Even though they are wearing masks to protect their skin from the damage of the elements, you can see that their eyes are smiling.

Then they start the negotiation. You say: “How much?” They reply: “Cheap. Cheap.” Then, they pull out a tiny pocket calculator and type in the amount in Chinese yuan. They start with a number like 110 yuan (about $16), anchoring the negotiation on their side—knowing full well that you are going to reject their first offer. You say: “Too much!” Then, in a brilliant negotiating tactic, they hand you the calculator and say: “How much?” The saleswomen of the Tibetan mountain passes allow you to anchor the negotiation on the other side, knowing with an almost absolute certainty that your offer is going to be more than they were ever hoping to get.

The negotiation continues when you type the number 50 into their calculator and hand it back, upon which you will be greeted with a bright smile that is visible even through their masks. Your saleswomen will type in a new number that appears to have met you somewhere in the middle, but closer to the number you have used as an anchor. Now, she looks like she is completely reasonable, and the reasonable thing for you to do is accept her counteroffer of, say, 65 yuan.

I watched this occur over and over again. Those who thought themselves tough negotiators were cutting the original price offered by 50%. But those who knew better were negotiating prices that were as much as 80% or 90% lower by simply saying no and walking away. Well . . . trying to walk away. When their price was accepted, they walked away with bags and bags of jewelry and artifacts, pleased with themselves for being such shrewd negotiators.

What Makes Great Salespeople

What makes the saleswomen of the Tibetan mountain passes so successful is that they keep asking for the sale over and over again. As you try to walk away, the salesperson (and her calculator) follows you, shouting: “Last price! Last price!” When you stop and turn around, she will enter in a new number on the calculator and hand it back to you for your last price (which I assure you is not your last price unless she agrees to it, otherwise, she will grab your arm and continue hammering prices into her calculator).

They are determined, relentless, and they persevere.

They are fearless and they ask for what they want.

They ask for the sale, and they keep asking until they get someone to buy.

They have to sell because they have people who are counting on them. And so they sell.

They also know the value of additional services. The picture you are looking at cost me 50 yuan.

Conclusion

Great salespeople exhibit great sales behaviors. This is true no mater where you go in the world, including the remote Tibetan mountain passes. What can you learn from the saleswomen of the Tibetan mountain passes?

Questions

The Tibetan saleswomen walk from their small villages every day, putting themselves in a position to sell their goods where their prospective clients will be. What are you doing to ensure that you are where your clients will be? Do you have a presence that ensures that you are there when opportunities arise?

What do you do to ensure that you have your dream client’s attention? How do you ensure you know and understand their motivations for buying? What language choices do you make based upon what you know about your dream clients and their likely needs and motivations that ensure you capture their attention in a meaningful way?

The Tibetan women follow you eyes and hand you the jewelry or whatever you were looking at; they are attuned to your buying signals. How do you assure that you are attuned to your dream client’s buying signals? What are the signals?

Negotiating does not easily frustrate the Tibetan women. They are playful and bring a good spirit to their negotiations—even though each sale may mean more to them than to someone somewhere else. What do you have to do to make your negotiations less adversarial and less zero sum? How can you learn to enjoy the game?

Who do you have to be to be as determined and relentless as you need to be to succeed?

Who do you have to be to be as fearless in asking for what you need to make the deal work for you and for your dream client?

Even though the saleswomen of the Tibetan mountain passes make transactional sales, there is much to be learned from them on asking for obtaining commitments. Who do you have to be to continually ask for the commitments you need to succeed?

Who is counting on you to behave like a salesperson?

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

Get The Sales Blog iPhone App to read The Sales Blog and Twitter Feed on your iPhone.

Can You Sell Better Than the Saleswomen of the Tibetan Mountain Passes? is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

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The Last Few Miles Are the Most Difficult, but the View is Worth It

Wed, 2010-09-01 09:24

I disappeared. I disappeared from the blog, I disappeared from work, and I disappeared from everything else for thirteen days. (Thanks to all of you who were kind enough to email me, call me, and direct message me to make sure nothing happened to me!)

A few months ago, I was offered a chance to visit Lhasa, Tibet and Shaghai, China with some friends. While planning our journey, one member of our group noted that, while we were so close to Mt. Everest, we should make the trip to Base Camp 1 at 17,000. We did the research, made the arrangements, and made the trip.

No doubt I will be using what I learned from this trip for some time to come. Some of the pictures I took tell an amazing story. But this metaphor is one of my favorites: the last few miles are often the hardest, but it is the only way to get the view, and the view is worth the effort.

To reach Everest, you have to travel across the Tibetan countryside for days. You literally have to cross over mountains with very little (or nothing) separating you from the edge on a road littered with obstacles like rockslides, livestock, and other drivers to whom lanes mean nothing. Crossing these mountains takes you to elevations almost as high as Basecamp, some as high as 16,600 ft. above sea level. A short walk from the car can leave you breathless, and you can expect to be awakened in the middle of the night gasping, for no other reason than the air is so thin.

Driving to Everest isn’t a trip you can or should make in a single day. To make the trip, you have to allow your body to acclimate to the high altitude. So your journey requires that you stay in the little towns between Lhasa and Mt. Everest for a few days, gradually climbing higher into the altitude. The best hotels you can you find will serve food that, should you be willing to eat it, will likely result in making your trip more difficult. The air quality is poor, and the countryside is dusty, and you’ll know this to be true even standing inside your hotel room.

The best accommodations won’t resemble anything that you are used to, even though the Tibetan people are sweet and generous, and even though they will offer you the best of everything that they have to offer.

But the last 60 miles is the toughest traveling. Once you leave Shegar, the last small town between you and Everest, you are off paved roads. You’ll travel up and over mountain passes that have never been paved, on roads that switch back dozens of times with nothing between you and the edge. The road is rough, and even the suspension on your four-wheel drive won’t do much to make traveling over the uneven earth easier. In many places, your guide will go completely off the road, knowing that it is both smoother and safer.

You make this trip not knowing what the view you will be like once you get there. If there is bad weather, you will see very little of Everest, even from Base Camp. If it is windy, the highest mountain on earth may be completely covered with clouds. Some stay for days and never see what they traveled so far to see. But if you make the journey, and if you have a little luck on your side, the journey ends with a breathtaking view that is provided to the few that are willing to make the journey.

What does any of this have to do with sales?

The Mountain Doesn’t Come to You: To Get the View, You Have to Make The Journey

The distance between you and your biggest dream client is great. The journey is not going to be easy, and the road that you have to travel over to win your dream client can sometimes be the most difficult and challenging road you will ever face. But to get there, you have to make the journey.

The mountain doesn’t come to you. It doesn’t come to anyone. Those that experience the mountain make the journey.

What Is Easier Down Low Is Harder at Altitude

Working on smaller, more transactional clients does nothing to prepare for you for what you face when pursuing giants. What may be very easy and very natural to you as you call on clients at one level may become incredibly difficult as you move higher (sleeping and breathing is easy at sea level, it is something altogether different at 15,000 ft.).

You may not rely on your sales process to win smaller clients. You may even win some deals after violating the iron laws of sales. But when you climb higher, you will find that what works at one level doesn’t work at all as you move higher. A half-assed needs analysis may get you by on transactional deals and may cost you your deal as you pursue your dream clients.

To survive and thrive and altitude, do what those who live at altitude do. They follow the rules, and they are happy to share them with you. They go a little slower. They do what they know to work most often. They put themselves in a place to succeed.

The Last Few Miles Are the Hardest. Make a Way.

The last few miles pursuing your dream client are often where the road gets both dangerous and bumpy. You run across challenges that you have never before encountered, and you often find yourself way off anything that resembles your road map.

If you have done everything right to get to the final stages, the last few miles can often be where deals are won and lost. Navigating the rough terrain, selling inside, going off the roadmap, and negotiating the terrain are all part of getting there. You may be physically tired, and you may be out of your element, but the end game is where you will be tested.

The challenges of winning increase as your deals get larger. Sometimes there is no road. Being a professional salesperson—and winning—means making a way where none exists.

Even If You Lose

Some people sleep in tents at Base Camp so that they have every possible chance to see Mt. Everest. Their determination and perseverance are sometimes rewarded. But the smart people make the journey knowing that even if they don’t get the outcome they were seeking, that the journey provides them with the growth, the experiences, and the stories.

It is best to journey to Everest when you have the greatest chance of a clear view. But sometimes, you have to go when you have the opportunity. The same is true of pursuing your dream clients: while it is nice to have favorable conditions, you have to make your attempt when you can—even if the conditions aren’t favorable.

And you have to love the journey—even when the road is rough and even when you don’t get what you came for.

Conclusion

Winning your big deal dream clients is a journey. The end game can often be the most difficult part of the journey. But if you would win, you have to make the journey.

Questions

What is your Mt. Everest? Who is your Mt. Everest? Have you started on your journey? Are you making the attempt that you need to make in order to win your dream client? Or, are you waiting for the mountain to come to you? When will you start your journey?

Do you recognize that what may work at one level may become a liability at a higher level? Do you recognize that those who perform at a higher level have rule-sets that they follow that allow them to succeed at that level? Are you studying those rule-sets? What discernments are you making about what you do and what those who live and breathe at a higher level are doing? Who are you studying?

Are you willing to go off the roadmap and make way to get there with your dream client? Are you comfortable being uncomfortable? What are you willing to do to move obstacles, to navigate over and around them when necessary? What are you doing now to make a way? What should you be doing?

What do you have to do to love the journey? What are you gaining from your experiences? What lessons are you learning and how are you applying these lessons to your future deals? How are you applying what you learn to your life? How do you get the most from losing?

Read my interview with Tom Peters (Part One and Part Two).

Read my Blogs.com featured guest post on the Top Ten Sales blogs.

Read my monthly post on Sales Bloggers Union.

Get The Sales Blog iPhone App to read The Sales Blog and Twitter Feed on your iPhone.

The Last Few Miles Are the Most Difficult, but the View is Worth It is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino

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The sales blog

The High Price of Joyless Sales Manager

Your People Are Your Only Asset (A Note to the Sales Manager)

Adding Meaning

Don’t Confuse Goals and Disciplines

Can You Sell Better Than the Saleswomen of the Tibetan Mountain Passes?

The Last Few Miles Are the Most Difficult, but the View is Worth It

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