Fake Money Blog

Mr. Andersson knew he had to dream big, but dream realistic, because it was no time to build castles made of sand. He would muster all his business knowledge and quirky life experience to get this plan going. All he had to do to start his march towards the biggest telemarketing company in the world was the first step.

Today I had a discussion with one of our sales reps. He had suddenly gotten an inquiry from abroad. It was a person familiar to him and they had even done some business before.

THE CATCH
Sounds like a fairly sellable situation, right? Well, this rep rakes in just about two million euros per year and the quotation was about deal size of five million euros. The only catch being speedy delivery of an offer. Well you are having exactly the same gut feeling towards this opportunity as I did. No way this is going to turn into business.

SMOKE IN YOUR EYES
Now my rep started to tell all the bright reasons why this particular case should come before everything else. He carried on with his best sales stories and tried to justify special treatment. It didn’t seem to have anything in it, but hot air. Well I humored him, because during tough times we also need compassion and drive not only peppy sales talks and rallying speeches.

HAPPY HOUR
Eventually I stayed bit later and took care of this matter, when finished I called him again and told the good news. He was all but melting butter in my hands. I went on to ask what has he done during the couple of hours between our calls. “I haven’t been able to do anything, I’m so excited about this deal“, he shrieked!

Have you been in this situation? Like I said, times have been tough lately and he is falling behind his quota. Instead of relying on systematic work to meet that quota, he decides to welcome random chance as his saviour. I bet that if after a week’s time I call him and ask how it’s going he will start talking about this chance how he has been working his ass off to reel this deal in. In reality he has been busy hoping that his old contact would buy from him and his year would be saved.

TO LEARN
Now if he would use all this excitement and energy to do some gruntwork and develop few prospects he would be in much better situation to produce some real sales. He will not be able to see this on his own, I guess I need to have a chat with him after a week. How should I handle this situation? Do you have any ideas? I would love to hear them out.