Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Landing the Big Fish

If you are earning your living in sales, you had better be thick skinned and able to take rejection. In the world of 'cold call' selling, you hear a lot more no than yes but the ones who survive keep pounding on doors anyway. The company I worked for understood this and yet they still expected success and if you couldn't produce you ended up demoted, back to grunt work or even worse out the door. I knew to 'earn my chops', so to speak, I needed to land a big account, a chain, or at least one large store, and yet I kept striking out. I kept getting close to one account or another but I was unable to close the deal for some reason.

The experienced salesman knows his customers, he knows who is interested in making a change and who is just window shopping and thus knows how to prioritize his time more productively. I had yet to learn this ability and after spending weeks on a potential client, I learned he was using my pitch to squeeze his current provider for a lower price I almost threw in the towel. Not knowing he was just playing me, I had made promises that were not in my control to keep but I thought I was so close I just kept giving in to his demands. I went home that night and told my wife that maybe I wasn't cut out for this way of making a living, that maybe I should go out and get a real job. The nos I could take it was all the maybes that were so discouraging but what I didn't see at the time was that each call no matter what the outcome was teaching me my craft preparing me for success.

I did finally land my first big account and it turned out to be huge. I just happened to call on the buyer at a time he was unhappy with his current local provider and after a lot of work and time spent coercing my boss into a pricing structure leaner than we were comfortable with he accepted my offer. The buyer then casually mentioned that he wished he could find a supplier like us for his stores nationwide. When I told him we were capable of doing just that, I ended up landing the largest account ever written up out of our office.

The thrill of a big sale is much akin to a homerun in the bottom of the ninth or a basket at the buzzer it makes you spirit soar. However, just like sports, there is always another game tomorrow and you have to keep producing game winners or you'll be replaced. I never made another sale as big as that first one but I did have a rewarding career because of it. It's amazing how close I came to giving up and maybe I never would have known what I'd given up.

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