“Sales.”  For years this was the only job title I wanted on my business card.  I’ve never understood sales people who wanted to disguise their true purpose with titles like “account executive,” “marketing representative,” or “business development manager.”  We don’t make cold calls and spend half our lives running through airports because we love traveling and want to make new friends.  I’ve always wanted the people to whom I’m selling to understand and respect that my job.  My very purpose in the relationship with them is to sell.  Most importantly, if they don’t want to buy from me, I simply want to know as quickly as possible so that neither of us wastes each others' time.

Any salesperson worth the title has worked a cold call campaign or two in their time.  Some of us have also had the luxury of working with world-class marketing teams who hand us only hot leads to work.  Regardless of the path to the prospect, once a prospect has expressed interest, my two simple rules in engaging any prospect relationship are these:

(1)    I won’t lie to you – don’t lie to me.

(2)    I won’t waste your time – don’t waste mine.

I wish all salespeople could have the experience I’ve had working for the last three years to build a new company.  Everyone in a new company wears numerous hats, and there are never enough hours in the day.  In an environment like this, you truly value every minute you have…and it starts to change your attitude when selling.  Here is the simplest example, and a great lesson learned.

Classic sales teaching tells us that we need to leave at least 5 to 7 voice mails (emails, direct mail pieces, etc.) for a prospect without response before we can assume that they aren’t interested and stop calling.  This may be fine in a cold call campaign, but who has time to do this with a prospect who has already told you they’re interested?  Somehow through the ages customers have learned that sales people will keep calling, so there’s no reason to actually return their calls.  As professional (and busy) salespeople, we need to politely but firmly make it clear that this isn’t the case.

The most voice mails I ever leave now without response is 3, and depending on the verbal agreement I had with the prospect about our next communication, many times only 2.  Here is how the last voice mail goes, “Hi John.  I’m sorry I missed you again and that we haven’t managed to connect since we last agreed to do so.  I know you’re busy and so am I, so I promise I won’t waste either of our time by leaving you any more voice mails.  I’m going to assume that you aren’t interested at this time in moving forward and will update my records.  When you are ready to move forward again, please give me a call at…” We find that over 50% of these voice mails are returned the same day.  Respect your own time, and others will too.