Waiting to Find Out

This Monday, my daughter tried out for the dance team at the high school she will be attending next year. This was a big deal for her and I think she has a good chance of making the team. She is my oldest and, in my “unbiased” opinion, a pretty talented dancer. (She would probably shiver knowing I’m bragging on her right now, but it’s a father’s prerogative.)

Last week, she had two days of rehearsal where they taught her the two routines she would have to perform for the tryout. She had to absorb choreography to understand the steps, understand the underlying rhythm of the music to maximize her performance, and navigate some new relationships. The coach of course is a key decision maker, but then there were the incumbent team members she had to greet, to ask questions and understand from their point of view what the coach was looking for.

My daughter understood it was a tall task but she had the weekend to rehearse. She needed to refine her steps and add her personality to make the dances her own, so she could shine on Monday.

After school on Monday, she went directly to the tryouts. For over two hours she waited, performed, waited, performed and waited. At the end of her tryout, the coach let everyone know they would find out on Thursday who made the team.

This is a big moment for her. She will either be incredibly excited, or incredibly disappointed. However, regardless of the outcome, she will continue to live her life and move on to the next challenge.

I can’t help but see the parallel to my daughter’s experience with trying out and waiting to find out if she made the team to the life of a sales professional. If you re-read the second paragraph, you can easily identify steps that are similar to those required of a Sales Professional every day.

It can be a roller coaster. You can seemingly work for days, weeks and months, doing your best as a sales professional and be frustrated by a lack of success. But you stick with it, because you know that hard work and good luck are not exclusive of each other.

If that is not crazy enough of a life for you, imagine if today, my daughter doesn’t hear at all from the dance coach? And what if she doesn’t hear tomorrow, next week, or the next month? What if she doesn’t find out until she shows up to school that the team has been practicing for months and the coach did not have the decency to inform her? That would be terrible, wouldn’t it? It would be unfair and the coach would likely be reprimanded.

This happens to Sales Professionals every day. They provide a quote, a proposal or a statement of work only to never hear from that prospect again. Why? Have they not done their job? Have they not done exactly what the prospective customer has asked them to do and then… nothing.

I could wax poetic about all the ways Sales Professionals can prevent this – I’ll write about that in the future – but for now I would just ask all those decision makers in the world to do one thing: give us an answer. Yes or No, it does not matter. We’ll get over the No and if we get the Yes, we will do everything we can to make it one of the best decisions you ever made.

If we can get over being cut from a team in high school, we can get over not gaining your confidence to do business with us. But what we have trouble with is not getting an answer. We deserve it, just like a kid trying out for a team.

Have a great rest of the week and if you are finding you are having trouble getting answers from your prospects, I can help you with that. Contact me to schedule a time to talk.

And please keep your fingers crossed for my daughter.