He was one of the most tenacious sales people on my team. Literally, his perseverance was supernatural.
With a short list of clients, he needed to solve customer challenges in all accounts to maximize their potential to reach his sales quota.
However, there was one account that he couldn’t break into. Every week, he’d email, call, and visit their office. I think he even wrote hand written notes. He persisted for over a year.
Still Nothing.
Yet, every Tuesday he dedicated ample time to this non-responsive account.
When we reviewed his account plan. It was clear that they did not want his help, support, or expertise, even after he dedicated five hours per week for over a year to this account. It was time to accept that this account was not a good use of time. In fact, that five hours a week could go to another account that wants help solving a problem.
A characteristic of every successful sales professional is to accept when to walk away from an opportunity. It’s a difficult thing to do and requires a sense of confidence and maturity.
It sounds counterintuitive, but accepting a loss means you can direct your energy to places where you can experience a win.
As Niti Shah writes, know when to call it a quits and consider sending a "break-up" email letting the customer know this is the last time you will contact them. Niti states, "Ironically, this is the email that gets the highest response rate for many of the salespeople I spoke to when researching this post."
Many of my clients use the ‘Triple A’ method from Module 3 of my program but the first step is to ask yourself:
- Where are the areas you can begin to accept as losses?
- Where can you start applying your energy to areas that create wins?
Acceptance is the hallmark of our resilience training and specifically our Chaos to Calm workshop. Feel like you or your organization help increasing productivity and resilience in your employees? I work with both 1:1 and corporate clients to help increase performance and wellbeing through my proven Performance-Based Mindfulness methodology.
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