Selling Boldly

7Proactive Selling versus Reactive Selling

As discussed in Chapter 2, most salespeople spend their days reactively.

Customers call when they need something, or when they have a problem.

We must serve the customer. There is no choice. We must address their concerns.

We do. And then, almost immediately, the next customer's concern or urgent need arrives. Right?

And this is how we salespeople live, Monday through Friday. Reactively.

The problem is, sales growth requires proactive work.

We cannot react our way to strategic growth.

We can react our way to accidental, random growth.

But we become a pinball, bouncing around from one incoming concern to the next.

If the right inquiries or problems come in, we might grow. If we're lucky. But it's not up to us. Of course, if the wrong concerns come in, we must react to those also. And in this case, we do not grow.

When we react our way to growth, it is not in our control.

We cannot predict it.

We cannot plan for it.

We cannot expect it.

We are left to simply wonder if this year we will be lucky and possibly grow.

But we might not.

Because we are not in control.

Random inquiries are in control.

This chapter examines two additional ways of considering reactive selling versus proactive selling. One of them is from a medical professor at the Mayo Clinic. The other is from a sales growth consultant in the Chicago area, me.

Default Brain versus Focused Brain

Amit Sood is a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, and ...