Glengarry Glen Ross rules!
What a refreshing way to start my morning, but to read about sales strategies, and at that, the oldest one in the book: ABC – Always Be Closing!
(This of course is from the Glengarry Glen Ross movie or theatre play – I’ve seen both…)
Reading it on Brendon Connelly’s Slacker Manager blog made me thing of how often we complexify the issues today when selling, compared to good o’le cold calling and door-to-door selling. Not to say there aren’t better ways, but sometimes, you just have to go back to basics. Believe it or not, we do the same at IBM. Having worked in our TeleSales team in a call center, I’ve lived the back to basics era where we had to reserve an hour a day to cold calling. Sometimes we had lists, sometimes we didn’t.
Did I like it? Not at first, but it sort of grows on you. Because if you’re in sales, you’re in it for a few things:
- Speaking with customers
- The challenge of the tough customer
- The satisfaction of a closed deal
- The prize (commission) that comes with it
I’ve since then moved on to technical sales, where I help craft the deal, so I don’t get all those thrills anymore. But once in a while, I’m involved in a deal close enough to the end of the sales cycle that I experience some of those moments. And it still feel very rewarding. Because today, more than ever before, if it ain’t win-win, it won’t fly.
Because it’s not about winning so much as it is about agreeing to a short-term relationship where each party provides a specific output. Deals that aren’t properly crafted don’t live long, in my experience.
