Coffee's for Closers

6My Best Sales Lesson Yet

‘Winners never quit; quitters never win’.

—Vince Lombardi

One of the best lessons in my sales career to date was when I was selling address management software. When you enter your postcode on a website, this is the software that fills out your full address. It also cleansed millions of data records and was used in all the major call centres and other big businesses all over the UK.

I was driving home from a day of meetings and my mobile rang at about 16:30 pm, a call from my office. It was our receptionist, Karen, who said, ‘I have a PA on the phone from a company that wants some “information” on our data capture software; it sounds like a complete waste. Shall I just take a message?’

If I'm honest, I couldn't be bothered to take the call and was inclined to agree with Karen. I thought, it was just a PA, and not a decision‐maker or an influencer; they are simply looking for information. I have software to sell, and if they want information, they should look at our website or visit the library. I had never heard of the company before, so it was clearly a tinpot Mickey Mouse operation. But I reluctantly told Karen ‘to keep her on hold’. I pulled over into an Esso petrol station in Highgate, got out my notebook, a pen and my diary and was as ready as I'd ever be. The call went something like this:

PA:

Hi there, my name is Louise and I'm calling on behalf of Ian Higgins, the Global IT Director of XXX, and we need some data capture and data cleansing ...