Have you seen the cartoon that depicts a soldier fighting his enemy with a sword and a shield, with the salesman behind him attempting to get his attention? The reason the salesman is trying to get his attention is because he has a machine gun for sale. The problem is the warrior is too busy fighting to listen to the salesman.

I had a similar experience in the late ’90s. While representing EMC I was calling on a very successful staffing company in Maryland that happened to be experiencing exponential growth.  This growth was putting extreme demands on the IT organization to adapt and grow the infrastructure to support the demands of the business. Consequently IT was more reactive than proactive, as more and more processing power and data storage was required. This, of course, was understandable in light of these extreme circumstances.

After meeting with the CIO, it took me several months to arrange a meeting with the technical team to present the EMC solution. To make a long story short, we presented the EMC solution to potentially resolve a long list of data storage challenges. Shortly thereafter, we installed an evaluation system, and migrated the data to our platform. The results were so significant in terms of performance, reliability, and scalability that the client initiated a plan to replace all current data storage with EMC.

The point of this story is that the manager of the technical staff asked me a very interesting question after he saw the results of our technology: “Where have you been over the last two years?”

Now, I wasn’t replacing a shield and sword with a machine gun, but to this client it probably felt that way. His life had improved that much.

So what can we all learn from this story?  If we as professional sales execs sincerely believe that our product or service can make a big difference to a prospect, we should continue to be persistent. We need to be mindful that our prospects have day-to-day responsibilities that prevent them from taking the time to examine better alternatives to the way they are currently doing business. We as sales execs sometimes feel that potential clients have lots of time to meet with sales people. I can assure you this is not the case. This means that if you truly believe you can make a difference, it is your responsibility to be creative as well as persistent to gain an audience.
From a professional sales exec’s perspective, I also believe there is a parallel.  We sometimes tend to react to what is thrown our way on a daily basis. We focus on closing business, responding to sales management, and addressing customer issues.

This is certainly true in the volunteer work I do as a small business advisor with SCORE.  Small business owners, in general, focus on the day-to-day challenges of running their business. They are working in their business as opposed to on their business. Only until I ask them a series of questions do they realize the need to take a deep breath and look at their business from a strategic standpoint. Continuing to do the same things you have been doing is most likely going to generate the same result.

I believe the same holds true for a sales exec. Take a day a month to work on your business. Evaluate your time deployment.  Are you spending your time efficiently in terms of revenue generation? Or are you spending a significant amount of time in activities that are not productive? In other words, don’t confuse activity with productivity!

As a professional sales exec, every activity you engage in should have the end goal result in more profitable business.

Take a day off and focus on your business.