Find the Opportunity In Every Environment
As the year draws to a close, sales leaders often preach about starting the first quarter with a bang, building momentum early on by driving customer engagement. But let's face it, these messages are worthless unless you started building a robust pipeline well in advance. To illustrate this, let me tell you a story about my first Christmas spent deployed in Iraq.
Back in 2005, I was stationed just north of a war-torn Baghdad, feeling the pressure to raise morale amongst my team amidst daily threats waiting for us outside the gate. Being a sports fan, I decided to start writing to sports franchises to initiate some sort of dialogue. Little did I know that this would be the beginning of my first-ever sales pipeline. Starting with every MLB team, followed by the NFL and NBA, I wrote approximately 200 hand-written letters to the PR and media departments of just under 100 pro teams over three months, tracking the dates in which the letters went out in hopes of gauging response times.
But as fall turned to winter, I heard nothing, and the reality of being deployed to a war zone set in. It wasn't until the night of Christmas Eve that my efforts proved worthwhile. I received a call asking me to move a large box addressed to me, and upon opening it, I found a letter from the New York Yankees along with 300 Yankee caps. My morale instantly shot through the roof, and the timing couldn't be better. I shared the caps with my fellow soldiers at our battalion holiday gathering, reading the letter aloud and taking extra pride in being a lifelong Yankee fanatic. We laughed together for hours, and before we knew it, the Yankees were trending in Baghdad.
Writing my letters had become a success and well worth the time spent. And now, as a sales professional, I realize that the sales process is not that much different from my approach while sitting in Iraq. You must take a deliberate, targeted approach while casting a wide net, in order to accomplish your goal. More importantly, you must set the stage early on in order to hit your target. If I had waited for morale to drop to irreversible levels to begin my outreach, I never would have had the same level of success.
So, my advice to you is to take action before falling behind in sales. If you ease into a new season, quarter, or year, and wait to accelerate your prospecting efforts, you will always be playing catch-up. Stay aggressive, take action, and execute. You can turn the least likely customer into a fan with a targeted and deliberate approach.