It’s Amazing What Happens When You Show Up!

Just last week I was talking with one of my key sales people. He told me he wanted to get out and sell more, but he feels he has too much work to do. “Work? What work?”, I asked. He gave me his very supportable list of tasks he needed to accomplish. Some of them were quite plausible. Some were veiled excuses, and some were not so veiled.

As sales leaders, we must work hard to shift, diminish, or destroy the tasks that seize our time with customers. We must also set the stage and define what the real work of sales professionals is to be - meeting with clients.

If there is a key to increasing sales and developing customer relationships, it is the simple act of showing up. The ability to be there for your customers on a consistent basis will produce results. I am not talking about anything sophisticated or fancy, just being there. I believe that most people in sales and sales management know they will get more business if they spend time with clients. If so, why is it so difficult for sales people to get out of the office and do it? Why is so much time spent in working to motivate sales teams to visit with customers? What I have found is most people have one thing keeping from doing the “real” work of sales. It is fear. Fear of what? Fear of death, discomfort, success, doing nothing, missing out, and the fear of fear itself.

Let’s explore some of these…

Fear of Death
This may sound a bit extreme, but our minds, thoughts, and self talk conjure up crazy levels of drama we have to deal with. Sometimes, these thoughts distract our energy levels to less effective activities. Here is an example what our fear of death, as it relates to meeting with customers, might look like:

What if I say or do something wrong during a sales call? The customer will get upset and kick me out, which will keep me from ever getting any business from them, which will keep me from getting business from any other customer, which will keep me from reaching my sales results, which will result in me loosing my job, which will keep me from being able to buy food, so I won’t be able to eat and I will die. So, I am going to stay in the office and work on another proposal.

This may not be a conscious line of thinking. However, we tend to over dramatize what will happen if we fail, rather than taking the energy wasted on our negative thought process and put it to work in motivating us to get out of the office.

My dad has imparted a piece of wisdom on me for years. He tells me, “You can’t make a mistake!” and “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” How I have interpreted these morsels is that we tend to make things out to be more important than they really are and there aren’t really mistakes only learning opportunities. Some people could say that Thomas Edison failed 2000 times before creating a successful light bulb. In reality, he found 2000 ways that didn’t work. He only needed one that would. Wisdom is that the consequences of what others may view as failure or a mistake are simply learning that occurs.

Fear of Discomfort
How many times have you heard the phrase; “Get out of your comfort zone!”? What does this really mean? From a sales perspective, our comfort zone may be the office or our cars while we travel to and from appointments. It may be all the fun tools we deal with everyday that we convince ourselves are meaningful work.
Tools like product sizing programs, call reports, presentation development tools, computers, and anything else that may keep us in the office preparing or providing proposals. The real meaningful work is as sales people is proper leverage of these tools so we can spend more time with customers.

We tend to use the tools for the sake of using the tools rather than focusing on the industry of the tool. For some reason we gravitate to these activities rather than getting out and meeting with customers. We are thrilled when we get that first opportunity to use a new product selection software program or sizing guide.

We need to get excited about meeting new customers, starting a new customer relationship.

Fear of Success
One of the most interesting fears is the fear of success. Deep concern that we will get into a sales call, the customer will be interested in what we have to offer, want to purchase, and process an order and we won’t know what to do or how to handle.

Just like a dog chasing cars. Some sales people are afraid they’ll catch one and not know what to do with it once they catch it.

Don’t worry about not knowing all the details of anything. I mean anything. If you find yourself in a situation where the customer wants to work with you, the details will work out. I don’t mean that we should not do our homework to learn about how to get things done within our organization. I am saying don’t let it keep you from doing the important work of meeting with customers. Chances are, there are people within your company who will help you process the orders and all the details needed to get the customer supported.

Fear of Doing Nothing
Most of us believe we have to do something significant during a sales call to differentiate ourselves. Believe it or not, if you show up, it differentiates you more than you think. Selling is all about relationships. It doesn’t matter the product, price, or position in the market, we must develop relationships to maximize our business. That means we have to get out and often. The frequency may vary based on the needs of your business, but every business needs human contact to move it forward.

Many of us in sales are driven to succeed. To that end we have a strong belief that we must always be doing something of significance to achieve results. Our culture has taught this. We do not have to do anything significant to get business. Let me say this again. WE DO NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING SIGNIFICANT TO GET BUSINESS. We do however, have to show up. We have to be there. Otherwise customers don’t know we exist. Some of the most unlikely sales personalities I have met have been extremely successful in sales, simply by putting this concept into daily practice.

In general, women have a distinct advantage in this area. It’s how they are wired. They know how to simply listen to understand without always trying to “fix” things. Sometimes our customers just want an ear. Sometimes they don’t want us to fix it. Sometimes we can’t even if we try. Women have an incredible instinct to understand this notion and how to be there to console and further develop the relationship on a deeper level.

Fear of Missing Out
In working with various sales teams for more than a decade, I have found people genuinely want to be connected, included, involved, and recognized. There is a genuine fear of being left out of some significant company event if we are out of the office. We might miss the opportunity to be involved in company lunches, meetings, or we may miss the CEO or some other key company leader visiting the office. We may fear loosing position or simply not feeling as connected as we may desire. In sales we must smash through this fear. If you find these things are essential to your job satisfaction, you may need to switch to inside sales support.

Fear of Fear
Sometimes we flood our minds with excuses and we overwhelm our ability to move past these thoughts. What will the customer think? What if I fail? Our personal head trash regarding these two questions impacts our ability to move.
We will naturally take the path of least resistance. We must get beyond the day to day activities that keep us droning on the same path dealing with the same issues.

The Bottom Line
For two years, one of our clients had not transacted any significant business with our company. When asked about the account, the sales person provided a complete and legitimate answer about the customer's poor financial condition, their alignment with our competition and overall deteriorated relationship with us. He suggested we go visit them so he could demonstrate how bad it was. We met with the owner and he shared that no one had met with them on a regular basis to develop the relationship. In the next two weeks we received 4 project orders and over $100,000 in business, just because we decided to show up.

If we get out, spend time with people, and demonstrate a genuine interest in their business, we will be rewarded for our willingness to step out.

The Leadership Take Away
All of this is great advice for sales people and you may be saying, "This is exactly what I keep telling my team to do, but it isn’t working. They continued to be locked in non-selling tasks." Gut check time! What are you doing as a leader? Are you setting the example? Are you spending all of your time in the office? I know there are reports to run, analysis to perform, strategies to develop, problems to solve, and real issues that attack your time daily. But, no different than your sales team, you must get out! We as leaders have to model the way. It is critical that we put ourselves in harms way. What does that mean? We need to take the risk of being out there. As leaders, we have the same fears as our sales team and we have to show them how to overcome those fears by being there. So, get out! Show your team how it's done and show up with them.