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I
decided to laugh given that there was a certain lady who was emphatically
cracking up with infectious sounds that forced me to ease up into a succinct détente
before resuming the disheartening thoughts of my disenchanting feat. I must
confess that I am doing very badly in terms of pushing my clients to give me
their documents for submission. While I usually sleep after giving my fare in
the bus, this time around I had lost sleep. The middle aged lady seated next to
me was in forty winks before and after giving her fare. Occasionally, the bus
has usually gone past my alighting point given that after a hard day at work, I
usually feel like sleeping because buses have become the cradle where I can catnap
as well as be sure of getting in the house without paying more.
There
was one morning I arrived very early in the office. I guess I was among the
first three because I arrived before seven in the morning. I never knew that
arrival at that time would end up being used as a bait to reprimand me for
non-performance. Hitherto, I had thought that pursuing CFA level I exams was
among one of the hardest things you can ever accomplish. Mark you, I was wrong.
In the run up to doing the exams, I was becoming more confident and could easily
tackle any exam on the curriculum content even if I knew deep down that the
results were not going to be very good while in the process of individually
dispensing a mock exam.
Being
a candidate and preparing for such exams is totally different from the humans I
face every day. As opposed to exams, humans are very unpredictable. They can change
within the twinkle of an eye. In the case of exams, you might prepare very well
and end up passing with the best grades. Human exam is quite different. Guess
the reason why you should be paid more is because of your ability to convince
people to buy a product that you are selling. The product normally gives you
sleepless nights and each and every day you mull how to be proficient in selling
it or increasing consumers who take it up. When you muster the game, that is
the time you can relax, but before, you cannot.
The
art of convincing an individual to even listen to you before buying is not easy
for a rookie like yours truly in the short run. You have to take time to
nurture the skill of handling clients which does not come easy. Most of the
time you will ask if someone is interested instead of giving the prospective
client the offer of giving you a chance to go meet him or her. You will find a
rookie like me starting off a conversation in English and being very conservative
so much so that our conversation never lasts more than three minutes. As for
experienced individuals, if it means reaching out to a customer in their native
language, they will do so. At the end of the day, we are all human beings, we
love it when we can associate innately to the person who is trying to convince
us to buy from them.
‘I
was asking if you are interested in the new product we recently launched so
that I can come over to your office to tell you more about it at your convenience.’
That interest bit should have been banished from my lingo as a salesman by now.
I must confess again that I never knew I would one-day work in a bank. It was off
my ambition and outside my career scope. Even if it was to work in a bank, I had
wanted to work in a position that required the use of knowledge and technical skills
more than creativity, communication and soft skills. Nevertheless, the process
of gaining knowledge from various sources convinced me to think about selling
services because all organizations have this arm by default.
Ideally,
a skilled and seasoned salesperson never gives a client the chance to make a
decision of putting him off before he can drive the point home. Most of those I
have interacted with are very witty and sometimes deviate from the selling norm
so that you will hear them laugh and hold conversations for some time over the
phone as you only hear from one end. If a client asks if they are telling them about
what they have heard over and over again, they will ingeniously eschew the
question until they corner the client into submitting for an appointment with
all that they require from him or her. I guess you need to be street smart to
be able to outwit the regular guy into closing a deal. Luckily, for most prospective
customers you have never met, once you meet them in person, you need not be in
a hurry. If you are able to sustain a lively conversation for some time, then
they will easily give in as most people never want to let you down thinking
about the time and money you have put in getting to meet them.
As
I intimated earlier, these days, I never like arriving in the office early. I
normally arrive just in time because there was a day I arrived early, my
manager got wind of it from a senior manager who lives far and normally arrives
very early and hence came to my desk to congratulate me for being an early
bird. Instead of looking at it on a positive note, my manager decided to reprimanded
me for no particular reason having spent half the day trying to get an
appointment after a customer I was to see decided to shortchange me and went
for leave on the day I was scheduled to meet him. I had wanted to use him as a gate
pass to approaching other clients within the organisation he worked but he was
ahead of me in intelligence. That day, I really got pissed off and even though I
wanted to collect myself from the disappointment, I could not until in the
afternoon when I was lucky to have called and I got an appointment that
materialized into a meeting even though I did not close the sale.
A
good salesperson knows how to prepare a sales pipeline. Doing that entails
forming a good rapport with clients in the organization or firm you go to seek
from clients. There is a saying that Rome was not built in one day. Skills are
learnt slowly by slowly. If you rush, you will might falter in going through
certain crucial stages but that does not mean you should be daft to that point
where you need to be pushed to do that which you are supposed to be doing.
There are times when I usually feel like I should have gone straight into a
situation where I am a star instead of being that person who is the laughing
stock as I am not being referred to as the S I unit of top performers in the
business.
I
hate to think that I am not doing well when it comes to sales. I initially
wanted the experience as it could offer give me an avenue to go about
exploiting and getting new stories that would keep my blog busy and my mind
also thrilled. However, what I find is pressure. Like any other business,
dedication is key. I have forgotten about other business and decided to
concentrate fully on salesmanship. Though there are times I have deviated, they
are very few. Am not perfect, that’s why I have to learn from my mistakes.
Occasionally
I have been making cold calls to different firms in town with a colleague or
two. Though the strategy has worked in some instances, I think I will adopt a
reclusive one because those who do go solo are bringing in more sales than
working in a group. Clients, like most individuals love it when they only deal
with a single individual. There was a conversation I did eavesdrop on while listening
to those who we call vintage (those who have stayed in business for long).
There was this guy who was saying that every time he wanted to see a certain
client, a situation would arise and he would delegate the duty to another
person. The client would insist that he could only meet him. As time went by,
he found time to see the client. Unlucky for him. The client was now
indifferent towards him. When he requested if they could meet, the client no
longer held him in high regard and refused the offer. A lesson well learnt.
I
guess this write up has removed the clog that I had that was giving me constant
worries. However, I must still acknowledge that the first few months of a
rookie are still not that easy. But it’s better and worthier than being
unattached to a place where you cannot generate some few cash. Sometimes when I think
I could have done better than the extent to which I am doing. There are times I
wish I could do things different. I wish I had more numbers to call, more
appointments to go to and be more disciplined. However, with human beings it is
different. You can never say you will have more time to attend to them. They
will decide when you can see them, decide if they will receive your call and
the list is endless. If you call someone, they can decide to hurl invectives or
offer you empty promises which means there is nothing you can do about that if
you have no other people to call, you swallow it up hoping the next person will
be judicious enough and realize that we are all human and must eke a living
whether the job is bothersome or not.
Again,
there are certain situations I have found myself mulling deeply. Colleagues are
busy filling forms and ensuring they are ready for submission while a person of
my ilk is looking at the sky or listening to those who have done well during
the day. I am coming from the school of thought where I never feel like I am
not doing something constructive to be worth in the space I am in. In my case,
no matter how many people you have talked to and there is no sale, at the end
of the day, if you have no submission to make, you will have done no job.
Statistics never lie. Mine are not palatable in their current state.
I
don’t know what I will do to change the figures so that I am able to ensure I get
them right to be able to earn more and be in good books with myself and my
boss. At present, I am not feeling like going next to her because I cannot
deliver. Obviously, I was recruited on the basis that I am able to convince
someone to uptake the product that I sell. When at the end of the day I am not
able to do what is right, I tend to question the reason why am not doing things
the right way. Such situations make me feel doleful.
There
are days I find myself connecting to the spiritual side just to increase my chances of close a sale. Perhaps
that maybe likened to tempting God. Even though most of the jobs I have done
before have given me worries, I even had to work from home, I have not yet been
able to work from home as a salesman. I have been promising myself that I will
buy a smartphone to enable me do that while on the move but being indebted has
denied me the chance. Having a smartphone is just what I need now. Even if it
cannot bring in sales, it can be able to aid in so many other selling facets
that will contribute towards my sales snowballing. For example, I can watch YouTube
clips on how to approach customers and tremendously improve or read blogs and
relevant websites on what is the current trend in selling industry.
What
I know is that at the end of the day, I will not give up. In the event I am not
able to crack the art of selling, I may be forced to take up something else.
While it is not easy getting a job, it is very easy to lose one. As opposed to
my former job where I was a performer and ended up using the skill learnt to
make use of it even after moving out of it, this new job is teaching me a lot in
terms of people skills. Though there are those times that I have really been
irked to the extent I felt I needed to cool the fiery tempers by going straight into
a cold shower, or doing that which Jeff Koinange does, using a fire
extinguisher.
For
example, I once went to see one of my cousins in their office and the shame I went
through to see him taught me that even a relative can denying knowing you. I
was with a friend. We asked their receptionist if we could see him because I knew
if I would have called him to schedule an appointment, he have said he is very
busy and would keep on playing cat and mouse games with me to give up before
driving the point home.
When
he arrived, he also came asking who I was. Yet he was the same bugger who came
to collect me from campus (while in UON) sometime back while I was in the
process of revising for an exam the next day to go see their offices. Ideally,
I have never felt insulted the way I did. Even if you have to forget a cousin,
pretend that you know him just when he is accompanied by a friend because you are relations and you had once seen
him.
The
day he came to pick me up in university, I had no idea who he was, but the fact
that he did call me, I was able to shield my revision aside to go attend to him
because I knew he would help me one day in terms of securing a job or in other
ways. We walked for quite a considerable distance and chatted a lot even though
my mind was focusing on exams more than on what he was telling me. That day, I left
what I was doing in the library and went to see him.
My
colleague and friend who had accompanied me was quite perplexed but decided not
to show it off. He came to where we were seated then enquired about who I was
before going back to the reception to sort some issues. After his exit for the
brief moment, my colleague intimated coldly that even my cousin could feign not
knowing me. Anyway he did understand how we human beings are, especially if you
are carrying brown envelopes which signify that you are looking for a job.
We
briefly talked with my cousin but my pal, Don noticed how uptight he was. His
eyes were shifty because he was trying all means and ways to avoid us. A cold
call had gone sour. I was to write him an email detailing the products we sold
so that he could forward it to all the staff in the organisation. Which was a
plus. Even though you are hurt, you never show it. If someone who knew about you
and even visited your place cannot remember you after less than two years,
then, there is always a relief that there is that guy who will never forget
about you come rain come sunshine.
As
with selling, I will continue doing so even if they terminate my services.
Sales is a continuous process and those who know how to sell what they have
whether a product or service make lots of cash which those who cannot do will
have to wait for.
Have
a cheerful day. But until then,
Hasta
la vista baby.
[Picture
Source: Google images]
