A Perfect Failure Part 4: Expecting Your Suppliers to be Perfect 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte Expecting perfection from suppliers is like expecting the weather forecast to be right every day. Helpful, usually. Perfect, never. Some salespeople expect the regional sales manager to know every answer, the application engineer to solve technical problems with a snap of the fingers, and the factory to deliver every order the next day, come rain, shine, or global supply-chain crisis. That's a fairy tale, not a reality. I've worked with hundreds of manufacturer representatives over my career. A few were exceptional. A few probably couldn't be trusted to water houseplants. Most fell somewhere in between. The common denominator wasn't perfection. They were all human beings trying to serve customers in an imperfect world. Customers don't judge us by whether our suppliers occasionally stumble. They judge us by how well we respond when the organic material hits the rotat...

A Perfect Failure: Expecting Your Company to Be Perfect (Part 3 of 6) 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte People inside your company are prone to making mistakes. The warehouse ships the wrong part. Customer service transposes two numbers. Accounting sends an invoice that leaves everyone scratching their heads. Inside sales misunderstands a purchase order. It happens. Such are the travails of working with humans. One of the biggest surprises of my career was discovering that customers are generally more forgiving than salespeople expect. They understand mistakes happen because they run businesses too. What they don't tolerate is finger-pointing, excuses, or silence. I once watched a salesperson spend fifteen minutes proving a mistake wasn't his fault. By the time he finished, he'd convinced the customer nobody else inside his company could be trusted either. Accountability has rescued more customer relationships than perfection ever has. Companies don't earn loyalty by avoid...

A Perfect Failure: Wait Until You Catch Up (Part 2 of 6) 🕒 2 min read By Frank Hurtte Every salesperson on the planet shares the same fantasy. Someday, they're going to get caught up. Every email will be answered. Every quote will be completed. Every CRM record will be updated. Every voicemail will be returned. They'll finally lean back in their chair, admire a perfectly organized desk, and shout hurrah. Here I sit, almost five decades into my career, and that day has never arrived. I leave the office with twenty emails in my inbox and return the next morning to find sixty. I'm convinced my to-do list breeds after dark. Nobody has explained the biology. How does 20 become 60 overnight? Quotes multiply. Meetings appear on the calendar without permission. Customers somehow develop emergencies while I'm sleeping. If you're waiting until you've caught up before you begin prospecting, you've unintentionally created a permanent excuse. Successful salesp...