Starting this blog reminds me of when I first became a salesman and had to make my first cold call. I put it off as long as I could. Worried myself sick. Drove through the parking lot several times. Then when I thought I was ready I put it off for another day.
Luckily, I had a great sales manager that encouraged me and had the patience to help a young insecure account manager get started. I knew what I needed to do and had no doubt I could do it but the time never seemed quite right.
Finally, I got the courage, parked my car, went inside and made my call. I would like to say I got a huge order and they are still a customer but that is not the case.
I’m not sure cold calls have ever gotten any easier for me but without a steady flow of new customers and products your business will eventually fail. We as sales managers must constantly encourage, train and sometimes demand our account managers to solicit new business. If we don’t have them make time in their schedule for cold calling and growing their accounts there will be a time when a customer retires, closes their business or moves their business to a competitor and they won’t have the skills to get back in growth mode.
I’ve seen very successful account managers struggle towards the end of their career simply because they did not keep adding new customers to their account package. Many of their once profitable accounts just slowly wither and die.
Every sales plan must have expectations and goals which require some form of cold calling or as we now refer to it as networking included in the plan. Look for more on effective networking in a future post.
Now back to starting a blog. What I did learn making cold calls was; putting off what I knew I needed to do and worrying myself sick didn’t make the sales call any easier. Without making cold calls I could have never got to where I am now, a much older insecure salesman putting off and worrying about starting a sales and sales management blog.
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