I WANNA GO HOME

I have always been amazed at what I hear come out of a reps mouth when they are having a challenging day. Today I received a call from a rep to tell me they wanted to go home to gather their thoughts.

Now I am not someone who gets shocked very often. I have been in sales and sales training long enough that very few things I see or hear anymore shock me, THIS SHOCKED ME.

I sat at my desk with the phone in my hand just staring at top of my desk, I was speechless for a moment. Finally I asked the rep what thoughts she was going to gather at home that she couldn’t gather just by pulling over in her car and grabbing something to drink for a short time.

I could just imagine her on the other end of the phone thinking about what to say next, and then it struck me. She was already home, this was a call to cover her rear end.

Not wanting to simply call her a liar, I asked her where she was that moment and offered to meet her and ride with her the rest of the day. She started to stutter a little and then said she didn’t want company she just wanted to be alone. I offered to buy her lunch so we could talk for an hour or so, once again she opted for being alone.

It wasn’t until I asked her if she wanted to quit that I got the truth. I was right, she told me that she had given up by 9:30AM. She had stopped by a customer that told her he would definitely buy the next time she stopped in. She stopped in and he didn’t buy. She said she made 2 more stops and both told her no. (Can you imagine 3 stops and 3 no’s… what is the world coming to) She said by then it was 9:30, she knew her husband was out of the house at work and she just gave up and went home.

 I wanted to know why she called me. What was she trying to accomplish by calling me? So I asked her directly what she wanted me to do. We both stayed silent for at least 20 seconds and she said, “I want you to help me make sales”.

This cracked me up, I blurted out, “FROM YOUR HOUSE?” Once again 20 seconds or more of silence. Then she told me I was right and she was just being stupid.

I looked at the clock and it was getting to be noon, so I told her to come meet me at the office and we would see what we could do about helping her. She showed up about 45 minutes later and I could see she had been crying.

I asked what she was crying about, quitting or quitting on herself. She shot daggers at me with her eyes and said she had NOT quit on herself. She told me she could do it.

She started to get up and walk out of my office and I asked her where she was going, she said to work. Why? I asked. She said to prove to me she could do it. I told her that she was going to fail.

Talk about a shocked look, she looked like I had just punched her in the stomach. She said how could I say that, I answered, she didn’t need to prove anything to me. I told her I believed in her a lot more than she believed in herself right now. I said to succeed she needed to go and do it for her. She needed to prove to herself that she was as good as I thought she was.

It doesn’t matter how long a rep has been selling, how successful they are, or how confident they seem to be. Every rep at some point gets an acute case of SELF DOUBT. There is only one cure, WINNING! It may be making a sale or getting an appointment with a buyer that you have not been able to get to before. It might be winning a contract or making a hire. It might just be opening the car door and getting out in a place that has intimidated you for days, months or years.

A win is a win is a win. We all need wins.

It is now 9:30 PM and I just got off the phone with the rep. She told me that her day got better, but not by much. She did make a few small sales but nothing to be excited about.

I told her that she needed to be excited about the entire day. I told her that she pushed herself to do things she really didn’t want to do and that the day might not have been an award winning day, it was still better than it would have been had she stayed home.

Lorin