When You’re Stuck During a Sales Call Improvise Like a 4 Year Old
Posted on Tue, Jan 10, 2012
Maribel was anxious and nervous for her granddaughter, Sara. It was the morning of Sara’s first solo dance recital. Maribel was a ballerina as a young girl and knows about the knots in your stomach on recital days.
The loving grandmother that she is, she didn’t want Sara to have an embarrassing moment at her first solo dance recital. From experience, Maribel knows those embarrings moments can still haunt you. This particular morning, Maribel’s parting words to Sara were the words of her own mentor spoke to her before a recital, “When you are performing if you forget a part, don’t stop, improvise, keep on going.”
The entire family of aunts, uncles and cousins are in the audience. Several of them have been to Sara’s practices and know her dance routine. It’s Sara’s turn. Sara starts the first few steps and it’s exactly what they were expecting, then she began dancing to her hearts desire. Maribel turned to the teacher and asked, “What is she doing?” and the teacher shrugged her shoulders and said she didn’t know, except it was quite good! As it turns out, Sara is not only a dancer but also a coreogypher.
Sara was taking her granny’s advice, she had forgotten the dance routine and decided to just dance.
Top performers can take a lesson from Sara. When top sales professionals get stuck this is what they do:
1. Be proactive and not reactive. Anticipate problems, challenges, trends affecting your client’s business. Strategize with the clients and your company on how to stay ahead of possible set-backs.
2. Be accountable. Do not allow yourself to blame or become a victim. Things happen. Decide are you going to be part of the solution or part of the problem. Stop and acknowledge that something happened and then ask, “What can you do to make a difference to move this forward?”
3. Seek others for help and advice. Top performers watch and learn from other top performers in their company and others. They are watching what others are doing well and take those ideas and apply them to their sales situations.
The next time you think you may get stuck, think of Sara – embrace the moment and keep on going!