Planting season is finally here. My garden is my Zen space, the place I go to remember how physical work and being close to the earth replenish me. It’s a refuge, a retreat, and reminds me how to be in each moment. After all, the earth doesn’t complain because it’s bored or has lost a deal. In the garden, there’s no blame – just pure cause and effect, though perhaps she does celebrate the great spring weather and all the potential the season offers.
Sales is like a garden where seasons come and go. There are times when we must be focused and busy planting possibilities – cultivating new relationships through networking, creating strategic partnerships, mining past client databases, and making sure our marketing efforts are on target, and times when we need strategically to tend what is growing through effective use of our sales process, ensuring relationships and rapport are solid, that we don’t miss a beat on communications or mutual agreements, and that prospects never lose sight of the vision they hold and the fact that we share the vision with them.
Now and again, we also experience a real or perceived drought in our Sales pipeline and must be skilled at reviving opportunities, even the small ones. Then, there are times when we look at our pipeline and believe there will be a great harvest. The sales come in, we feel like a million dollars, and we’re ready to celebrate. We’ve earned the celebration, but first, we need to ensure a seamless handoff to any and all involved in implementation/delivery of services while maintaining an effective feedback loop so we can continue to manage the client relationship.
Navigating Sales’ crazy seasons isn’t for everyone. Some reps simply can’t make it through the tough times, so they move on to more suitable careers. Seasoned reps understand the cycles. Like a tried and true farmer’s almanac, they have a knack for forecasting upcoming weather, and they also know how to tend their gardens, investing time and effort only in quality opportunities and demonstrating the ongoing commitment to existing clients that reaps referrals – like sweet honey when you can get them flowing.
Tending to yourself as well as your Sales garden is also important, so I’ll write more about that in the next installment.
Meanwhile, if you need to work with a master Sales gardener, call me. I just love to “garden.”
