COVID19 Remote Working Day One Hundred and Fifty-Five of Selling Copiers
Yesterday marked my 154th day of working remote in NJ. That 154th day means that it's be seven months since I was optioned to working remote. Of course today is 155 and I'm sure we'll make it to eight months. Who would have ever thought that everything we do would chance in an instant back in March?
Today in New Jersey the State reported 1,139 cases just a mere three weeks ago we were average about 550 each day. For the past ten days the average has been over 1,000 cases per day. Some say it's due to more testing, some are claiming the second wave is upon us.
I say damn the torpedo's and full speed ahead to the end of the fiscal year.
There is still business out there (maybe not as much as there was) but it's out there to be had. With one order from today and one that I expect to get over the weekend mentioning Section 179 helped with both of these. One of my clients already had that in mind when he purchased a color wide format device. It was nice to get that order just a few minutes ago.
I'm also excited about our sales team. Today was the last day of the month for October. We have until 8AM on Monday to turn in orders in there's a shot that we could write almost $1M for the month! One of our managers just chimed in with "I can’t say enough about the dedication, effort and more importantly... the resolve of this team." Yup I agree the fire burns strong in our team.
I believe I mentioned in Wednesday nights blog that I signed an order with an existing client for $12.4K. I also had a verbal from a net new (Tuesday) where I thought I would have the signed documents that day. This is the same net new that I thought would send the documents three weeks ago. On the Wednesday phone call I thought we had it ironed out. Wednesday and Thursday my two calls and two emails went unanswered along with a text message. By this morning I wasn't sure what was going on. If you don't get a response of course we always tend to think the worst.
I had to do something. Waiting for things to happen is not for me. I make things happen. Thus this at AM I sent the email below to the net new client.
"I apologize for not communicating correctly with you. It was my understanding that we had an agreement in place for the lease of the Ricoh wide format and that you would sign the documents and email them back to me on Wednesday. I now understand that I may have missed something when we spoke on Wednesday and I do sincerely apologize for that."
My thought process was to apologize for assuming the order was a done deal. I thought maybe this will result in a return email with the order or when I call again I would get that person on the phone and work through the objection.
While on my way home from an wide format installation today I called the client. I was expecting another to leave a message, however the client picked up and apologized to me. My client had many other projects that he had to bring to fruition and told me that he is moving forward with the order and would have them to me on Monday or over the weekend. I responded with "that would be great if you could get them to me over the weekend and it would mean a lot to me." Thus I'm pretty sure that this will happen because I've had some weekend correspondence with him. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
So with today's small $5K order I'm somewhere north of $75K for the month. If I get this order over the weekend I can push to $85K. At that point I'll have missed my forecast by only $7K. I'm okay with that because of the conditions. For years and year I mention "conditions" and what it means for me is that sometimes no matter how hard you work you have no control on what goes on around you. **** just happens.
On Monday I realize that I will only be as good as my last month. The struggle is real and it continues for at lease another couple of months.
-=Good Selling=-
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