Persistence
This post is about two things, persistence and persistence.
I got an email from one of our clients which made my day. Let’s call him Steve (because that’s his name.) We had just talked the day before about how he was having a hard time getting to talk to one of his prospects.
I had mentioned that when you get frustrated about something like that, just think about how this is really pretty typical. How many clients do you now have that it took you a year, or maybe longer, of calling on before they became your client? Frustration is the salesperson’s worst enemy while persistence is his best friend. (I know Steve knew all of this already, I wasn’t telling him anything new—he’s a really good salesperson, but sometimes just hearing it from someone else is good.)
The email that I received said the prospect took his call. Steve was told that he must have ESP because the prospect was about to give him a call, that the prospect had just cut out his ad from the trade publication and was ready to make an order.
Which brings up the second component of the story: persistence. How many times did this particular person see the ad before he decided to cut it out? Although we like to think that the first time we run an ad that it brings instant success, the fact is that more often it takes several views before someone will act.
Be persistently persistent. (And you can do that without being a PITA. If you don’t know what a PITA is, send me an email.)
Tags: Business Story
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 9:32 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.