Sales Sidebar: Change or Get Left Behind

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I have always found it easy to compare odd stories to the world of sales.

Writing my latest book was a personal thing.  I love our
industry and even more, I love the process of providing solutions to appreciative customers.  The book was a labor of love for our industry.  As I launched into the process, I was nagged by the thoughts of how I could add more of my personality to the book. 

 

As I reviewed the book for the umpteenth time, I started jotting down off-the-cuff anecdotes and observations for sidebars within the text.  Most are pertinent to the book's storyline and off the wall.  To separate them from the intended content, I put them in shaded boxes.  I wanted readers to value these sections as bonus material beyond the scope of the book. 

 

Last week a friend who was going through the book with a couple of his salespeople reported that these sidebars have become a great addition to his sales meetings.  For the next few weeks, we will share these as well as the notes that didn’t make the cut.

 

The first comment came from a chapter discussing the need for salespeople to adopt new customer practices.  Here it is…

vintage photo of downtown Davenport, Iowa
Davenport, Iowa long long ago...
The first telephone line was installed in Davenport, Iowa in 1878.  It was a private line between the Davenport Water Company office and their plant about two miles away.  By 1912, the city of Davenport had 1,400 phone subscribers.  The numbers continued to grow very rapidly.  However, there were holdouts.  Some businesses saw no need to install phones.  I wonder what happened to them. 

Somewhere in America, a salesperson was arguing that customers had managed to contact them for decades before the phone technology, why would they need to change now?

Complete phone adoption took decades.  Some very rural areas didn't get phones until the 1940s.  Most of these old-time sales guys managed to make it to retirement.  You do not have that luxury.  Change or you will get left behind.

(The New Sales Guy Project, Frank Hurtte, 2023, pgs. 16-17)


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