COVID19 "Remote Working" Day One Hundred and Eight of Selling Copiers

Very short blog tonight.  Not much went on today, made about 20 calls , 20 or so emails, but I was able to set one appointment with a net new at 4:30PM.  That net new never answered the phone.....which means an email will go out tomorrow.

I'm still waiting on my $15K order, docs were sent on Thursday and I've heard nothing since I sent an email on Friday. I thought today would be a good day to let the ball travel on this one.   

The rest of the week is all about prospecting now, nothing else matters but a few items to clean up on my "to do" list.

Earlier this evening I had an email conversation with a Ricoh Dealer principal.  I thought I would re-post one of his paragraphs to me. 

"Of course these are different times, but the best of the best make changes and persevere. Who knows where we will be or look like next year or a few years away but the ones who work hard, stay focused and forge ahead will always be successful."

Right, good things come to those that work hard!

Sunday morning I wrote this snippet in one of my blogs for This Week in Copiers 5 Years ago.

For the last three weeks I've been held hostage with binge watching Black Sails.  There were four seasons and I'm in the last season and about halfway through to the end.  Pirates, Nassau and the British Empire proved to be an enjoyable story line for me.  However on last nights series I heard this line, "I am determined to be better today than I was yesterday". 

What can I say but that's enough motivation for next week for me.

Matter of fact I'll be writing that on my mini whiteboard as soon as I'm finished writing this blog.  This will be my calling card until the end of the quarter third quarter.

We're all in this together and I think it's much tougher here in the North East compared to other parts of our great nation. I also realize that many are going through the same issues with prospecting, lease renewals and clients who can't make a move.  It kinda reminds me of my opportunity list when everyone is stalled, what can you do to bring them to the finish line?  There's nothing you can do and it's at that time you recognize the only solution is to prospect.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day One Hundred and Seven of Selling Copiers

Earlier in the week I would have bet the ranch that my forecast for $20K would come to fruition this week.  I had the verbal for the $20K mid day on Tuesday, prepared all of the docs on Wednesday because there were a few moving parts to this order.  However those best laid plans of mice and men sometimes don't happen. I'm sure my DM was busy with other tasks and the thought of dropping everything so I could get the documents by the end of week never crossed him mind.  It isn't the first time and probably won't be the last time that this happens.

I did get a surprise order this week for a pre-owned wide format, that order put me up another $7K for the month. With six days left to the month (more than 25% left) I've got a decent shot at cracking $100K for the month.  However after next week there's really not much out there that has a shot of closing in two weeks.  I've got 23 opportunities for the next 60 days but most of them at this point are 50/50 at best.  The one thing I've always loved about this business is that if you work every day you never know what the tomorrows will bring you.  Just like that surprise order for the wide format I received this week.

It was about 2PM when I decided I would take a break and run out the to dry cleaners,  Did I say the dry cleaners?  I use to go every Saturday and each Saturday I'd be putting forty of fifty bucks on the table.   This was my first trip to the cleaners since the first week of March.  That dry cleaner is in Atlantic Highlands and no more than a 5 minute ride.  Atlantic Highlands is know for it's busy harbor, restaurants and fishing fleet.  Atlantic Highlands is also a port of call for SeaStreak Ferry service to NYC.  On any given day there can be at least four departures to Manhattan and just as many coming home.  Parking is never an issue because there's one main lot and an over flow lot.  I'm thinking enough for 300-500 cars. I never counted but just a rough estimate from the size of the lots.

The picture below at 2PM tells the story of COVID19 in New Jersey.  To me it looks like the Ferries are not even running. The picture below shows the end of the lot looking northwest into the bay.  Past the gate is the where the boarding takes place.

On my way home there was a large engineering firm that I drove past.  On most days the parking lot is full and there's probably 100 or so spaces.  As I did my drive by there were ten cars in the lot.  I know this business well because I've cold called it many times over the years. I've never been able to get any business but I do know that they use a facilities maintenance plan for their wide format print devices. I can only think that those companies that offer facilities management for wide format devices are in bad shape.  Those are the companies that offer propose the client pays $3.50 per square foot for every print and they supply the hardware, maintenance, supplies and in some cases even an operator.

The last thing I want to sound like is a pessimist about business in New Jersey but something needs to change really soon.  

My plan for next week to contact by various methods at least 200 accounts.  Out of those 200 accounts I'm hoping to create 4 or 5 new opportunities.  Will it be a struggle, hell yes it will.  But there's no shot I'm going to give up and say all is lost.

It's almost 11PM in Jersey, time to get ready for the weekend and stay tuned because in the upcoming weeks I'll post a link to my first guest podcast with Jesse.  It was awesome to be his first guest and Jesse asked some pretty interesting questions about my sales and personal life.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day One Hundred and Four of Selling Copiers

I spent much of the day trying to think about what I might write about tonight.  Would it be more about that one opportunity that I created or the measly 5 phone calls I logged, or the crap load of emails I generated today.  Still don't have a clue but maybe as I continue to write something will come to mind.

Here we go, in six business days we'll have logged 5 months worth of business days working remote.  Now we're closing in on half the year.  My how time does fly when we're all having so much fun.

I was able to generate a verbal for two A3 color devices today for a total of $15K (another client that asked for 11x17 capability). I finished up the docs around three and off they went.  Of course it would be nice to have them back tomorrow, however almost everything in the last two weeks seems to be a struggle.

I only had two appointments today with one being the verbal and another with an existing account that is merging with another company.  In fact this company stated they want to return the existing three copiers early because they are going to use the other companies copiers.  Just a little bit of problem since there are 12 payments left on the devices.  Years ago I would get pissed when this happened and now I try more to read between the lines. Instead of telling the client it can't be done. I stated no problem it can be done for this amount of money.  No arguments, no long email chains just kept it short and sweet.  I'll be finding out more about what's happening with this account tomorrow.

Today I was able to send 51 emails, and 22 of those emails went in one shot to clients that I felt might have an interest in something new.  All of the other emails were one offs.  I had a few responses however three of them will lead to work that I won't get a commission on. Thinking again there maybe a way to to get something out of nothing for one of them.  It's all part of the job that we do.

I have a conversation with my good buddy Larry Kirsch the other day and he told me that I should write my first book about "Selling in a Pandemic" because I had figured it out.  I love Larry he's such a nice guy and he's more experienced than me, plus every time we chat I pick up something from him.  There is nothing new in sales, it's the same as it ever was, and what's old is new.  Those one on one chat's can trigger a tip you learned many years ago and have forgotten to use it.  In this case when I was speaking to Larry I told him. "you know what's wrong with our sales people today", Larry replied with "no, do tell me", I stated "no one teaches reps how to close (ask for the order) today, it's more about being we're hear when you need us and hope you order from us".  

Larry agreed with me and I then went to my second rant, "why can't we close orders via email?"  I went on to tell him that I treat emails more like text messages now.  The short subject line, the body that states "hope you are well" and the question "how is business for you?".  When the reply comes in it's then another statement and another question, and then the communication becomes more like a text or conversation.  It's working for me thus I'll keep using this till something else comes along.    

While I'm on the subject of remembering what we were taught years ago.  One item that I always keep in mind is that I presume that the order is mine.  In some cases I'll thank the client for the order before they've agreed to order.  at other times I will use something like this "when you place your order, we'll being doing this, that and something else.  Just another way of presuming that you have the order.

See, told you something would come to mind.  Tomorrow? One appointment with twenty five or so follow ups and some additional prospecting.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day One Hundred and Three of Selling

I was so angry that I took my the mug of coffee that was at my desk and starting beating the crap out of  my notebook. I must have smashed it twenty times, by the time I was finished I had completely destroyed my notebook.  All I could think of, is what did I just do, this notebook isn't even mine. How the heck am I going to explain this to my company?  I thought about blaming the dog, I then thought maybe the cat, maybe I could say I dropped it, or maybe I ran it over.  Clearly I needed to get out of this mess and blame something or someone.  Seems I knew just how to solve the problem because it was then that I woke up.

I thought a lot about that dream from Thursday night, probably more than I've ever though about any of my dreams.  The need to blame someone else for my lack of responsibility to destroy something or destroy myself then grew some legs when I thought about selling.

How many salespeople put the blame on things that happen with events or people when they aren't selling? How many look for reasons that they can use that makes everything all right because they didn't do their job for the last month or quarter.  Whether it's a week with out power or my dog died too many times we look for reasons why we did not achieve our goals.  In most cases the reasons we don't succeed is because we didn't put in the effort to make ourselves successful.   

In most cases there are no excuses, you're late to a meeting because you didn't have a plan.  People need to  plan for the "what ifs" in life.   If your plan was to arrive on time you would have thought what happens if there's an accident, what happens if there is mega traffic?  Those "what's ifs" need to be a daily part of your plan if you're going to be successful.  Hard to believe that all of that came out of one 30 second dream.

I haven't written much in the last three days and that's because there hasn't been much to write about.   I'm still sitting at a little above $70K for the month with still 50% of the month left. My plan is to try and get to $100K with continued prospecting via email and selected calls.  

I had two decent opportunities that got hot at the start of last week, however both have cooled.  On Friday one of my other opportunities boiled over and seems like they are ready to move forward with two A3 color devices. I have that meeting at 11AM tomorrow. I already did the work and have the spreadsheets ready for the questions that may come.  Right, having a plan for the phone call and having everything ready can hope move the opportunity closer to closing.

Other than that it's a couple of appointments this week with nothing large on the horizon.  Most seems to be ignoring emails and calls until when they are ready to connect.  One account today finally got back to me after 8 emails and 5 calls to the client that went unanswered. I'm grateful that I finally had some interaction, but I also know that it's just not us sales people that are stressed.  We are all stressed with the actions of COVID19, buyers and sellers alike. 

Just an update on my lead service that instituted about three weeks ago.  I received ten leads so far.  Six of them were crap and I got them credited, thus out of the four I was able to generate three meetings (all virtual).  One lead stated her husband bought something else. one I'm still tracking and the other two were lost on price.  The loss on price was for hardware.  Thus at this point I'm not sure if I'm going to continue, probably give it another week or so.

This week also means I'll be sending my email campaign to a list of 900 or so net new account list.  This week I'm trying something new, instead of generating four pieces of content, I'm only doing three. The other piece of content is coming from another company outside of the imaging industry.  I thought it would be good to diversify the content.   The idea came from a meeting I had last week with a net new suspect that's in the payroll business.  The thought of me offering to help share the wealth with that VP went over really well.  You know sometimes it's more about planting the seeds and then doing all that work so you can reap the harvest when it comes it.  I've never ever been shy of hard work.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day One Hundred of Selling

The thought of 100 business days working remote didn't cross my mind today until I received an email from Tim (Veep of Sales) with a congratulations of hitting the 100 day mark.  In ten more days we'll hit the 5 month mark and at least here in NJ there is no end in sight. Yay for 100 days! 

Yesterday we were hit with a tropical storm Isaias in Jersey.  I live right at the coast, the ocean is a mere 10 minute walk. I was sure we would get hammered with heavy wind and rain.  We had very little rain where I live however much of the state suffered with heavy winds.  Downed trees, power poles, power lines and three tornado's were registered in the state.  My house was fine and we lost power three times yesterday for maybe a half hour at a time.  By 4PM the storm was gone, we had power, AC and a bit of a mess in my yard.  

Three years ago a bird must have dropped a grape in my yard and that was beginning of my grape vine that I've nurtured for three years.  It takes roughly three years for a grape vine to start producing fruit.  Well my grape vine was enormous and the grapes were plenty.  I read an article on the weekend and guessed that my grapes should ripen in the next 30 days or so.  Isaias wiped them out, tore the trellis out of the ground and snapped the main vine at the base.  Oh such a bad day for the grapes.

I had two appointments today and I'm glad I did because cell service was non-existent if you had to make a local call.  My thinking is that much of the power was cut off to the cell towers and the towers that were in use could not handle the date.  

That first appointment was with the net new client that just purchased their scond production device from us in 3 months.  I had to be on-site with my Dealer TSC from Ricoh.  Might was well bring the big guns and I'm glad I did.  We were there to help with workflow for the one device.  Seems the workflow is centered around and older program that only runs on windows XP.  I was kind stunned when I heard that.  We offered some suggestions, spoke about technology and after almost three hours we had developed interest in a Fiery controller and Digital Store Front.  That made the day worth the effort because the client is having pain with the existing workflow and sooner or later Windows XP and that software package will not work.  Maybe another case of being at the right place at the right time. When the second device is installed we will have added 1M net new clicks a month. 

I had to reschedule my 2PM appointment because we ran so late with this appointment.  I wanted to get back to my office so I could have a shot at hitting my 50 touches today (email, inmail or phone call).  I decided to take a different way home because of potential shore traffic that was piled up earlier in the day. Figured I would take a short cut, the shortcut didn't work and I finally arrived back at my home office by 4PM.   Every road I took had downed trees, downed wires and road closures.  It was a mess.

I managed only 20 touches today, however I was able to schedule two appointments. One for later this week and another scheduled for after Labor Day.

So far I'm still at zero revenue for the week and odds are in my favor to finish at zero for the week.  Tomorrow is another day and that means "another day another dollar"

-=Good Selling=-

I finally found this movie, bought it from Amazon just to record this 45 second clip.  Enjoy

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Ninety-Eight of Selling Copiers

One of my goals for Friday was to make sure that I reached my goal of contacting twenty-five businesses.  The plan was to get them all done in the morning since I had I thought my afternoon would be spent with one appointment and the writing of the large net new order for $58K.

Just about Noon I received an email from my VP about that potential order. I responded with "I'm being patient", he responded with "don't be patient after 1PM".  It was about 1PM when I emailed the client and asked about the signed documents.  It was thirty minutes later when the response came, "I completely forgot, will head back to the office and get them to you". Whew!  Okay I didn't think that was going to happen.  Two PM turned to three PM  and three wen to four PM  and there was still no documents. I sent off another email with "documents?". 

It was about five thirty PM when I called it a day and still didn't have the signed documents for the order.  I felt ****ty because we have this thing at the end of each week where all of the sales peeps post their numbers and it's shared with our team.  Mine was shared at $15K for the week. Hey, not a bad week but not what I had hoped for. Yup I was down in dumps an could only think about what else could I had done to bring that order home this week.

Six PM means it's dinner time for in our house and each night there's 5 of us for dinner. I finished dinner early and retired to our den to watch some news.  Of course I checked my phone to see if there was anything interesting.  Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and then my emails.  I had an email from my client that he had been super busy, he apologized and stated I'll get them to you in 30 minutes.  Of course I responded with one word, "thank you".  Thirty minutes and nothing, 7PM and still nothing.  I thought that next week will be a good week. 

It was 7:18 when I received the email with the signed documents!  Yay!  I sent off a message to my VP that we did it!  Finally the week was over and it ended on a high note.  In the ensuing email chain notifying all of the order, that we found out that we broke a record for revenue in a weekly time frame. Yes, it was a good week!

It's Monday evening about 5:45PM.  Much of my day was spent processing the order and following up on other action items that I had ear marked for today.  I had one appointment for tomorrow that I had to reschedule because of the impending tropical storm or hurricane that we may have tomorrow. Living at the coast is no fun for hurricanes, nor'easters or tropical storms.  Tonight will be spend securing the all items in the yard and making sure every window and door is tight.  

Not sure what tomorrow will bring in the way of weather but I do know what the forecast will be for prospecting.  I'm putting another 50 on my plate for the day and there should be no interruptions unless we lose power.

Our month closes on the 24th of this month. I have three weeks to add to my total. When I received the order on Friday my first thought was can I repeat May?  That's a tall task because I'm lucky if see $20K for the next three weeks.  But that's okay because I've never been shy of prospecting, the prospecting never ends.  

-=Good Selling-=

I had one appointment today and that appointment was more of a holding hands session with their new copier.  I didn't mind because I put the top down on the hardtop and worked on my tan for about 90 minutes with the drive back and forth from the home office.

Every time I drive to this client I take the same route.  That route takes me past the Garden State Parkway and Route 520 exit.  The parkway is a major artery that leads to North Jersey and that's where many of the jobs are.  At this juncture of the partway sits two commuter parking lots. I stopped there today to count the parking spaces or at least tried to count them all. My estimate is when the parking lot is full it hold about 750 cars.  Pre-Covid19 the lot was jammed everyday with additional cars parked where they should not.  Below are two pictures i snapped earlier today. Okay seems I only snagged one picture.

There' another parking at the end of the picture.  It's my best guess that both lots had no more than 75 cars.  This makes the lot 90% empty at 12PM on a work day.  This is the story in New Jersey, many are working remote, very few people are in their offices and I can only guess how many are out of work.

New Jersey is not PA and we're still shut down and shut out of offices.  When will it end?  Some have said November 4th, and I say that when Trump wins re-election it may be like this for another four years (I'm joking haha).

I can see the writing on the wall, I can tell that the future of businesses in New Jersey is sketchy at best.  Construction carried the economy in NJ for the last four months,  however many of those pre-Covid19-construction projects are now complete and I've herd rumbling that new construction projects are stalled because of COVID19 during the last five months. Something is going to break in the near future.

Since I'm part Nostradamus and I can see some of the future I set a a personal goal today.  In the past few weeks I've ignored setting a daily goal and only focusing on the monthly goal.  My goal today was to get in a combination of 50 dials, emails, in-mails (Linkedin) or texts.  Even with the two hours I took for the one appointment I finished up my goal right around 5PM.  A dozen or so calls and the rest was a combination of the latter.   I was able to manage one appointment, carry three emails conversations and advance one of my existing opportunities down the road a bit.  No new opportunities today.

My goal for tomorrow is 25 touches and that's because I have to process an order in the AM. Then put some time in on the opportunity that I advanced today.  MY wide format opportunity is back in the weeds and may never come out because the client stated that all of his submittals  are now required to be in a digital format.  Thus he needs to procrastinate for another couple of weeks.  The thought on have $20K in for the small stuff has now floundered.

Tomorrow is Friday and with a little bit of luck (yes I do like luck), I'll have the signed documents for the $60K net new order.  

-=Good Selling=-

Thirty-two received emails, thirty-eight sent emails, ten calls and two meetings was the menu for today.  

We had our weekly sales meeting and Tim (VP of Sales) spoke about how our cheese was moved the last five months.  That cheese is many of those existing clients that had trigger points for lease upgrades.  Most of those trigger points for lease upgrades are not important to the DM's during this pandemic. In fact I believe many see it as a blessing that the decision to do nothing is the best course of action.  But there are those DM's when faced with reducing costs will choose the path of savings in uncertain times.  The key is to find those DM's with that mindset.  They are the cheese.

The moving of the cheese means that we need to find the cheese again.  The cheese is still out there but it's harder to find than it was before.  For those of us that are good mousers (diggers) we've been through similar times in our sales career.  Remaining status quo and do the same thing we used to do over and over isn't going to work. We need to change and the reason we need to change is because change is good a thing.  Who the frak wants to be status quo all their lives?  

When I look back on the first few months of COVID19 it was more about me finding a new way to communicate with clients and prospects since I could not be face to face.  I'm no charmer by any means, but I am a little smarter than the average bear, persistent and have a knack for asking the right questions.  I'll also admit that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer nor was I ever the best closer.  What I did did really well was educate myself and was never afraid to work. If I couldn't beat the competition because of price or lack of features I found ways to out work the competition and show clients why I was their best option.

My most effective communication tool now is email. Over the last three months most of my appointments come from emails and most of my closes come from emails.  If you don't ask you don't receive something so simple when it comes to being a rep.

That existing 5K order I was expecting didn't come today and also the net new for about $6k (the one where he finally came out of the weeds) didn't happen either.  Hoping that both of these will go down to tomorrow. I did have another existing client that emailed me today about a 5K A3 color.  This account has been stalled for more than a year.  I would say from the wording of the email and the questions asked that this is an opportunity that could happen in August also.

I think it was about Noon when I received an email from my net new client for the $60k deal.  He actually thought I was going to be on-site today but remembered that it's actually next week that I would be there.  He wanted to clear up a few workflow questions and was then ready to make his pick of the three devices I proposed.  I read the email the short and sweet email three times and I knew today was the day he told me that they would make their choice.  If you don't ask you don't get, I replied with "Can we move forward with the order for the new device today? We can always make changes if we need to when we meet next week."

It was about 5 minutes later and the reply was "yes, let's move forward".  There was the verbal and now it was time to drop everything else and focus on getting the documents out for signatures.  Within a couple of hours the docs were on the way. It was after 5PM that I received an email asking if Friday was okay to have the documents. Right, there's no way I would say no.  Of course I can't count this yet, but all is looking well for having the docs back by the end of the week.

Tomorrow means more prospecting some things just never change.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Ninety-Three of Sales

It's just about 10PM in New Jersey, and the temperature is still about 90 degrees.  The last few days have been hot, humid and terrible to be outside unless you're planning a visit to the beach.

COVID19 in New Jersey?  Not much has changed since I gave my last update.  We're in some type of holding pattern from the onset of Phase 2.  The curve in New Jersey has been crushed for months now, the line is flat and yet our Governor keeps his foot on the throats of New Jersey businesses. 

In a facebook post I read tonight someone mentioned when schools by ope, one of the replies was November 4th (election day) and I added "when TRUMP wins it will be 2024".  It's just bad news and no direction as to when things might open again.

Another one of these catch-up blogs because I didn't post one on Friday.  Friday was the first day of the new month for us.  Thus it was catch up day for me also with trying to formulate a plan of who, what and when will cost for August.   I'm still sitting on 25 opportunities that have some percentage of closing in August.  At this point I'm thinking 50% are already in September and another 15% for October.  Most will not change any of their print devices until they have some sense of when they can restaff the offices.  When the going gets tough you pick up the prospecting and just keep adding to the opportunity list at some point you'll start picking them one by one.

Today was a good day!  I had one net new order for about $7.2 and existing for maybe $3.2 and I'll be getting docs tomorrow for a $5K existing client order.  That wide format deal that hid in the weeds on Thursday if last week poked his head out and offered my Wednesday for the docs. I'll believe it when I see it.

Today was also the day I was hoping for a net new order for $58k, that's been pushed back a day because of a team meeting that didn't happen today.  I'm hoping that this orders comes home late tomorrow.  Everything looks really good, but you never what could happen.  

Each week I need to submit a weekly forecast (been happening since COVID19 started). I had the email this AM and responded with $109K for the week.  I should have read the email better because I was being asked the forecast for the month.  I'm leaving it at $109K for the month because everything else on the list is a bit of a **** show.  

One saving grace for August is because there are 22 selling days and no holidays thus a full month to prospect and close.  

I took that lead service about a week and half ago.  So far I haven't sold anything, but I received eight leads. Out of those eight leads four were crap and the others were decent.  I would say 80% of those leads were for volumes of 3K per month or less.  In addition you can't get most of these peeps to call or email you back.  Two are solid leads for a purchase or lease in August.  At this time I'm still evaluating the service however at this point I'm on the fence with the quality of the leads.

Tomorrow is all about prospecting, I only have a handful of appointments scheduled for the week.  Of course the one tomorrow for the $58K and then an existing client for $30K on Friday.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Ninety-One of Sales

What a way to end the month!   

I pulled a zero today and I'm pretty bummed because nothing came through.  I had three good shots at having a banner month, two of the opportunities kicked the can down the road and the other opportunity who told me it's a go was no where to be found.  Another account that I've been dogging for more than 5 years.  When I spoke to Tim later in the day I stated that in most cases buyers don't buy on our time lines, they buy when they are ready.

A few minutes after 5PM I received an email from one of three opportunities that was left on the board that they will move forward with the color wide format.  This is an order I had lost because we couldn't get the wide format up the funky set of stairs.  I hung in their keep the conversation going and finally received at least the verbal.  Docs are going out tomorrow.

For years and years my sales month always ended on the last day of the month along with almost everyone else. It was something I was use to and something most clients are used too.  When we first went to closing our month early I was pissed because in that month or that quarter I was losing selling days.  I don't like losing any selling days.  Eight years later I'm a fan of closing the month early because I have two end of months in the same week.  Of course I've got mine and then I have everyone else's end of month close.  So it happens that many orders won't go on my time schedule but many other orders will happen at the end of the calendar month.  It's more about how hard you push.

My afternoon was filled with prepping a cost analysis to replace three A3 color devices with an existing client. Three separate spreadsheet each with three tabs took a fair amount of time.  Working on those spreadsheets was suppose to happen until late this afternoon because I had the large 60K opp meeting scheduled for Noon.  That meeting was pushed back to 3PM and then 3:45PM.  

The call at 3:45PM produced some questions and numbers that I did not have available. After 15 minutes of meeting I offered that I call my DM back in 30 minutes. I had 30 minutes to add another device scenario, amend the proposal, put a picture next to each device and then email the document.  In the middle of getting all of this ready I had a call from a net new that I sent a proposal to in this morning, Net new, they called me, I need to take the call.  After 15 minutes I believe she liked what she heard and I know I gave here some additional info that no one else could.  It was back to work on the proposal and it was during that time that my DM sent me an email and stated let's do this at 4:45PM.  

Our meeting took about 40 minutes. I need to review one item for tomorrow but got the commitment that on Monday they will be ordering one of the devices I proposed.  Nothing, nothing is closed until you have the order! I like what I heard but so much can happen from now until Monday.

I ended the month not close to where I thought I could be.  However, I have a commitments from 3 opps with one for 5K, one for 7K, and the one for 60K, plus the other $5K deal that ghosted me today.  

Tomorrow means cleaning up my CRM, and prepping for the new month, and tying up some loose odds and ends.

The harder you work the luckier you get.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Eighty-Nine of Sales

My day started at 5AM with a short trip to my back yard to see the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean.  I was attracted the hues of orange, purple and blue that was getting ever so bright to the east.  After 45 minutes it was time to get ready for my 7am appointment.

I arrived early and met with the decision maker as we both kept a six foot distance. I did the measuring, took the pictures, check the electric and it was time for a short chat on how the order would progress.  Nothing surprises me anymore as I was thrown a curve ball about remote printing in a less than favorable network environment.  We left the meeting with the understanding that I would secure the additional information needed and we were scheduled to chat at the end of the day to finish things up.  I made the call around 4PM and my DM did not answer, of course I left a message with a sense of urgency since there are only two days left in the month.  I'm not sure what the hold up is but I need to track this tomorrow and get the order in the books. I hate stuff going to the last minute.

At 11AM we had a weekly sales meeting via MS Teams an by Noon it was time to take a lunch break.  My lunch break was a hard boiled egg, bottle of water and 45 minutes in my back yard enjoying the heat.

I was also hoping for signed docs back from another order today, however that contact person was not in the office today.  She did reach out to me and stated the documents would come tomorrow.  More waiting

It was about 2PMish when I heard from my net new 58K opportunity and the thought was we were going to meet tomorrow.  When I emailed to verify the time I was told that Thursday is now better.  Frak, Thursday is the last day of the month!   Looks like I'm stalled for 24 hours and the next two days should be interesting.

My fourth potential order was an email back and forth for most of the day.  Mostly focusing on pricing where I held my ground on price, the client then asked for lease pricing. I supplied that and made a few recommendations for the financing.  Late in the day I get another email with another four or five questions along with the client wanting a year warranty.  I held my ground again, then pounded on the send button and we'll see what happens tomorrow.

If all goes well without the 58K deal I should sit at $35K for the month and that's not a good month in my book.  However considering it is summer and we are still in the thick of a pandemic I'll take it.  

The wild card is the noon appointment on Thursday.  I presented two options of course I'm hoping to bring home the one device.  The plan is to go in prepared for the virtual meeting, in advance I will have both lease, order and maintenance agreements docs ready to go.  Once the verbal is given the email will send along with a plea for them to come back signed before the end of the day.

II managed maybe a handful of calls today and finally after three weeks I caught up with an existing opportunity for 9K.  By the end of our meeting the opp was turned into $40K and looks like August business.

More work to be done 2 days left means the month isn't over yet.

-=Good Selling=-