“You’re too tough!” the candidate said to me. Then he got up and left my office. This happened last week, five minutes into an interview. I was recruiting a salesperson for a client. The candidate had come in wearing a rumpled suit. I asked him if he had a clean copy of his resume’ with him. He didn’t (I knew he probably didn’t because he didn’t have a pad or any other writing apparatus with him). He said, “I thought you got one by e-mail.” I explained to him that I did, but knowing whether a candidate brought one told me something about the candidate.
Then I noted that he hadn’t brought a pad or anything to write on. “What if,” I asked, “I needed you to write down some information to continue the process?” He was stumped for a second, then he brightly said, “Well, you could just e-mail me.” (He was living, at this point, in a place that I like to call “Don’t-get-it-ville.”) My next question was, “What do you know about my client?” He replied – you’ve probably guessed by now – that he hadn’t done any research. I said, “Do you always go into sales calls ice cold and unprepared?” That’s when he said I was too tough. But there’s a reason I’m tough.
It’s simple, and I can sum it up in two words: Excellence matters. More importantly, as my friend Patricia Fripp likes to say, “Excellence in all things matters.” What she means – and what I mean – is that if you do some things well, you’re more likely to do all things well. That’s because doing things well becomes habit, and habit tends to govern how we live our lives – and how we sell.
Let’s look at the three touch-points of that interview. He came in without a resume’, which is the key document in the hiring process. Sure, I’ve been e-mailed one, but why leave that to chance when it’s easy to carry one in? The same goes for the pad. I’ve seen very few good salespeople over the years that aren’t good note-takers, and if you don’t have a pad, you can’t very well take notes, can you? And of course, preparing for an interview by researching the company is elementary. All of these things showed a casual approach to the opportunity.
Something that at first seemed unrelated happened to me yesterday. A speaker with whom I became acquainted, who is in the process of launching his career, e-mailed me and asked me if I still get nervous before speaking. It seems that he has a program on Monday and he’s nervous about it. I replied, “Yes, I do still get nervous. I prefer to think of it as ‘eager anticipation.’ I’ve given literally thousands of speeches, training sessions, and workshops – but before every one, I get that little tingle that tells me I’m about to do something important.”
And that’s the key, I think, to both of these things. I get eager anticipation before a program because the program matters to me. It’s important that I am good on the podium, that I’m excellent, and that my audience learns what I want it to learn – and more importantly, what they want to learn from it. We get nervous because we care about the result. As humans, we get nervous when we are about to do something important, be that a speaking engagement, a first date, a sales call, or a job interview.
That’s the common thread with excellence. People who dedicate themselves to excellence in their lives and in their work do so because they care about the result. As I’m writing this column, I’m sitting in the Kansas City International Airport at o-dark-thirty, waiting on the plane that will take me to Orlando, where I’m speaking at the ASI Show tomorrow. I’m doing four different workshops. I’ve done all of them at least a dozen times before, for various audiences. I know them like the back of my hand. Yet, I’ve practiced each one of them twice this week. I’ll get to my hotel early enough to do another run-through this afternoon in the hotel room. I might even do a quick run-through in the morning before I speak. And I’m excited to do it. Why? Because the outcome of these workshops is important to me. I care, therefore I’m a little nervous – and I’m dedicated to excellence.
In sales, there are entirely too many people who aren’t dedicated to excellence. I see them every day. They are the ones who have agenda-free sales calls. They are the ones who show up unprepared and add nothing to the customer’s buying experience. And they are the ones who will be out of the profession before long.
If I had to give you one piece of advice for 2013, it’s this: Dedicate yourself to excellence. Not just in terms of selling, but in terms of living. Keep your desk clean. Dress well. Make your bed. Prepare for each sales call like it’s the last one you’ll ever get. And if you do get a little nervous, recognize that for what it is – you care.
