Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

We have a training module called pre-call strategy sessions.  When we initially talk about this process, most participants think that the pre-call strategy session applies to only the final presentation when you are presenting your proposal in hopes of getting the business.  There are a couple of problems with this thinking and I'll get to that in a minute.  I want to talk first about my daughter Alex going off to college this weekend to the University of Dayton.

College planning, like sales planning, is more than just planning for the day of the event when you drop your daughter off to school or for the day when you make your presentation.  In reality, in your professional life as a sales person and as a parent, everything you do should be to prepare you for these moments.  It was at that moment when I hugged her, kissed her and told her I loved her in front of Marianist Hall that I realized I had missed several opportunities to be prepared for that moment and to make sure she was prepared. It was then that I realized that:

• My execution did not reflect what should have been my priority.  In other words, I spent too much time on the road, in the office, working at my computer at home and not enough time with her.
• You spend too much time doing admin 'stuff' instead of developing new relationships
• I took her presence for granted.  I rarely went to her room to talk and visit.  The first morning she was at school and we were home, I walked past her room; the door was open, the bed was made and she was gone.
•  You fail to stay close to your best clients on a proactive, regular and consistent basis. The key word being "proactive" - seeing them when they don't need you or they don't have a problem or providing solutions for their problems that you don't have a product or service for.
• There is more to planning for college than making sure there is money.  I then realized that everything that I said, did or thought - good or bad - was now her foundation as to how she would live her life on her own.  I realized and regretted all at once the times I was short with her, criticized her, didn't take time for her, and gave her an opportunity to witness me being selfish, arrogant, prideful, rude, unforgiving, ungrateful, angry and stupid.  (Certainly, there is another side to that coin, but in these moments we are all worried about what we didn't do or didn't do right)
•  Everything you do with your client, EVERYTHING, regardless if it is a direct contact with them or what they observe you do in other settings, gets recorded and they develop an impression of who you are and how you treat others and probably treat them when they aren't around.
• Eventually things come and they go.  It is the natural progression of raising children.  Either by design or by default, they do go away or we will suffer the stages of loss no matter how well we try and intellectualize the departure.
• You will lose clients.  But you need to let some of them go even when they or you are not ready.  You can't grow and they can't grow if the status quo remains the status quo.

Today is Monday the 24^th of August and she is on her own surrounded by 10,000 of her new best friends and the staff at the University of Dayton that is committed to putting her, my daughter, in a position to become the very best she can be.  With all of my short comings and all the things Linda and I may have failed to do, we did manage to do enough of the right things to put her in that position.  She loves UD. She has already made several friends and she is excited about being on her own and exploring her future.  She will do well.

As I talked to Linda about how I felt about Alex's departure, I told her that I needed to blog about this.  It wasn't the answer she was looking for. But after further discussion this morning, I had a chance to explain myself.  My goal is to help others.  Not just in the arena of sales training, sales management and sales culture development.  No, it's just helping people.  My goal with this post is to help those unsuspecting parents think differently about college planning so that when their day comes, they will have felt that they've planned well beyond the financial requirements, that they have paid the emotional bill for that moment well in advance, and they can look back on their time together and say to themselves "Job well-done."

Go Flyers!